


Brotherhood

by Ramabear (RyMagnatar)



Series: The Life and Times of Izunaru [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Academy days, Angst, Blood and Gore, Gen, Grief, It's All About the Family, Izuna hates everything, Izuna is Angry, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reincarnated Konoha Founders, Reincarnation, Swearing, Time Skips, and brothers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6416044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/Ramabear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Izuna awakens with the memory of the Senju blade still in his chest; a wound that proved fatal for him and cut his life short on that final battlefield. But the blade and the battle are both missing in this new world. A lot of things are, in fact. His black hair. His sharingan eyes. His family.</p><p>He's alive, again, and living in the village his brother Madara fought to create. Alone, angry and full of a hatred beyond his years, beyond his generation, Izuna accepts the name Naruto and commits himself to a single goal. </p><p>He will never fail his brother again.</p><p>[on hiatus while i finish another series]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Little Baby Toes on Little Baby Feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kattenprinsen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattenprinsen/gifts).



He woke gasping. He sat up, hand flying to his side where the fatal wound from that damn Senju’s blade had plunged in between his ribs and-

There was nothing there. Nothing but soft skin and the hard press of rib bone under muscle.

Weak. Soft. Underdeveloped muscle.

A tiny hand pressing against a tiny chest.

“What on earth?” His brain told his mouth to say but it came out more like “What on earf?”

Was that a _lisp?_ And what was that _voice?_

He probed his teeth with his tongue while his hand went to his throat. No wound to his tiny ribs. No wound to his throat. Three missing front teeth, but with the hard edge of adult teeth growing in.

Slipping from the bed _-too high up for it to be his own-_ he landed on bare feet. They were tiny too. Everything was so…

It was just before dawn, the usual time he woke in the morning, and the light through the window was enough to see his arms as he held them out in front of himself and stared down at them.

Tiny tanned fingers attached to thin tanned wrists that lead up to bony tanned elbows and… and…

Looking down there were tiny toes attached to thin dirty brown feet that lead to knobby ankles and legs like sticks and… and…

He was little.

He was _a child._

He needed a mirror.

His footsteps were loud on the wooden floor. _Thump. Thump. Thump._ So loud. Louder than they’d been in years. These are not the feet of a ninja. These are the feet of an untrained child. He finds the bathroom -it’s the only other room with a door- and slams it open. Light. He needs light.

His hands form the symbols for a katon, just a little one, just a flash of light to fill that mirror in front of him, but his fingers are too weak to hold the position and his chakra won’t mold to the fire. Aggravation fills him and he flails, kicking out at the counter, climbing up onto it and grabbing whatever is on it to fling around.

A cup bounces off a wall and hits something, a switch?, and suddenly the room is filled with harsh white light.

He catches his reflection almost immediately.

Short blonde hair.

Bright blue eyes.

Tanned skin.

Weird marks on his cheeks- _whiskers?_

He smashes his cheeks with his hands, pinches them, pulls them. He sticks out his tongue, stares at the holes in his mouth where tiny teeth are giving way to adult teeth. Pulling on that stupid blonde hair, he screams in his fury, wordless and anguished and confused and miserable.

He is _Uchiha Izuna_ and this is _not his body._

* * *

An old man comes to visit him.

Morning has come and gone and Izuna has done a full inventory of the tiny apartment that he woke to. He doesn’t know how old he is but he knows he is alone. There’s one bedroom, filthy with clothes all over, and the bathroom, cleaned up from his flailing before. Other than that is a kitchen that opens up to a sitting room, both messy, both tiny, both filled with things he’s never seen before.

Something that stores food, though all it has is milk (he had some earlier) and one apple (there were two, he ate one already).

He’s hungry, trying to figure out how the things in the kitchen work because an apple isn’t enough, when the old man shows up.

The old man knocks on the front door and walks in like he owns the place. (Maybe he does, but that doesn’t mean that Izuna’s going to let him keep thinking that for very long…)

Izuna stares at him from the kitchen. He’s wearing the only clean clothing he found, some orange pants. (They have the Uzumaki swirl on them and he _hates_ them.) The man walks in, hands behind his back, and he’s wearing long robes and a _stupid hat._ Izuna hates him on sight.

“What d’you want?” He goes for sullen and angry and manages it excellently. Tiny arms fold over a tiny chest and he shivers against the cold. (The only shirts that were clean had the Uzumaki crest and one is bad enough. He feels like his skin is itching just thinking about it.)

The old man raises an eyebrow at him. He reaches into a sleeve and Izuna tenses, he can’t help but tense up. This man is powerful. Even if he can’t move his own chakra the way he used to, the way he _should,_ he can feel this man’s power. It’s the only reason he doesn’t spit curses at him.

“Your classes at the academy start next week,” the man says in a dry, faintly amused voice. Izuna hates that voice. “I brought a little extra to your usual stipend so you can purchase the books and classroom equipment you’ll need. Do you have the list from your teacher?”

Izuna stares at him. This old man has brought him money? To buy _schoolbooks?_ “No.” The answer is a basic instinct. Someone points fingers at you, asks you things, blames you for shit, what do you do?

Deny. Deny. Deny.

(Especially now. Especially when confused. Especially when alone and lost and… and… a weird, stupid, blonde child with Uzumaki crests…)

The old man sighs, nodding like he expected this. “I included a copy of that list with the stipend.” He reaches into the sleeve of his robe and pulls out a paper package. He steps over and places it on the table. He raises a finger and wags it scoldingly at Izuna. “And don’t go spending it all on ramen. This money is for your books, Naruto. Not. Ramen.”

If Izuna were who he was _supposed_ to be, he would bite that finger off. With pleasure. “Of course.”

_Naruto?_ He wanted to ask. _Who names their stupid blond child Naruto? Where are his parents? Or mine. Is this my body now? Are they my parents? What did you do to them, old man?_ But instead he edges towards the table and takes the package. He opens it. The money is different from what he’s used to, but not too much. He can make it work. There’s also the paper with the list of materials. Books. Paper. Etc. Etc. Boring shit.

_Academy. Classes. For what?_ “Classes start next week?” Someone has put up a calendar on his wall and there was a date circled. He glances to the calendar, tucking the package of money into the waistband. He can go shopping on his own as soon as he was done with modifying those stupid, ugly clothes.

(Maybe there would be enough money to just get new ones, but Izuna doubts it.)

“Only five days from now, really,” the old man smiles. “Aren’t you excited? You’ve been waiting to start training to be a ninja for months now.”

Izuna did not need classes to become a ninja. Everything his father had ever taught him, everything he learned from Madara, everything the other members of his clan had passed on to him, it was all still in his brain. He just needed a bigger body and that would come with time.

He’d have to be patient.

Izuna was never very good with that.

He huffs but nods to the old guy. “Sure. Yeah.” The man looks at him with possible concern. Or suspicion. With that hat shadowing his face it’s hard to tell. So he gives the man a big, bright smile. This face was good at those kinds of things, he’d learned when he’d finished screaming that morning. He showed lots of teeth and said, “I’m going to be the best ninja ever.”

Izuna decided the man was concerned, because he frowned slightly and asked, “Are you feeling alright Naruto? You didn’t drink expired milk again, did you? You’re supposed to pay attention to the date printed on it.”

Whoever claims to be the parents of Naruto are going to die, Izuna decides then. That was just fucking irresponsible.

He narrowed his eyes at the old man. If he was related to this Naruto and considered _this_ the way to take care of a -well, however old he was- child, Izuna was going to kill him, too. That would take some time and a lot of training but if there was one thing Izuna _was_ good at, it was training.

“I’m just hungry.” He admitted at last. “I had an apple and some milk. The milk is not sour.” Not that checking the date would have told him anything anyway. He hadn’t known what day it was until just a minute ago.

“Even you get tired of having ramen, don’t you?” The man was smiling again. He walked through Izuna’s kitchen, or Naruto’s kitchen, whatever, like he’d been there many times before. He opened one of the many cupboards that Izuna had found stuffed full with container upon container of what could only be described as desiccated noodles.

There were only four dishes in the house, besides a half dozen chopsticks, and none of them were in the cupboards. They were all in the sink. A bowl. A pair of cups. A plate.

Izuna wants to kill whoever abandoned this Naruto to the false noodles and the sparse kitchen and the apples that were half bruises. “Yeah…” he said, turning so that he never has his back to the man. He’s pulled out one of the containers and turns it over in his hands.

“If you want to become a strong ninja,” he said, “You’ll need to eat your vegetables as well. Plenty of greens to get big and strong.”

“Yeeaaah…” Izuna said, drawing out the word. That’s obvious. Proper nutrition led to proper growth.

He looks at the containers with a new sort of horror. Those shitty fake noodles. Was _that_ what this body had fed on? He pressed a hand to his ribs. So thin. So visible. He could count them. He _had_ counted them.

This wasn’t his natural body type. This was a half starved child’s body. Horror filled him with ice, frosting his skin, chilling his muscles, freezing his blood and cracking his bones. He took a half step back. It hurt, the sudden understanding that those boxes upon boxes that fill the cupboards are the things that these people consider food, that they think are appropriate for a growing child, an aspiring shinobi, to eat.

How much bone loss had he suffered? How much muscle development had he skipped over? How had he even developed at all?

How old was he? He could barely reach the top of the damn kitchen table. He had assumed four or five but…

What if he was six? What if he was _seven?_

“Naruto?” The old man steps towards him. He kneels down at Izuna’s level and reaches out. He puts a hand on one of those thin little shoulders. “Naruto, are you alright?”

Izuna shakes himself from the ice. He needed to move past that horror. There were more important things.

Better food. Strength. Training. Power.

He tries to brush away the hand but it is heavy. And warm. Izuna hates the comfort of it.

“Bad dreams, old man,” he muttered. “No food and bad dreams. Can I go now?” He asks before he remembers that they’re standing in his kitchen. It’s a nervous, conditioned response to Tajima. This man might not be his father in spirit, but he was in strength and power. Whoever he was, he had power over Izuna. Naruto. Whatever. Whoever he was.

Izuna’s head began to hurt.

The man lifted his hand. “Get some breakfast.” He swept up to his feet. “We’ll meet again soon. I look forward to hearing about how you’re doing in the academy.”

“Yeah.” Izuna bobbed his head. He stepped aside as the man walked past. He mumbled some sort of goodbye, tamping down on his panic, his horror and his anger as best as he could.

As soon as he was alone, Izuna turned around and shoved the table with both hands. It screeched as the legs skidded over the floor, but he pushed it until it was against the wall. For good measure, he kicked the leg and swore when all he did was hurt his little toes.

Little baby toes on little baby feet.

Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

He was going to become stronger as soon as possible.

But the first thing to do was to get rid of that damn Uzumaki crest.


	2. Not an Uzumaki

The first day of the academy finds Naruto- that’s what he goes by inside of his head, now, because when people stare at you the way they stare at Naruto, you either embrace the demon they see or you flee from it and Izuna will never run from anything that makes these people fear him- arriving with the influx of other children. They’re five. Small, like him, but some are not quite as small and many are much more excited.

The first day of the academy finds Naruto faced to the back of some other student wearing a dark blue shirt with an all too familiar symbol on it.

His symbol. His family’s symbol.

The Uchiwa.

The other student is a boy, who is walking with someone much taller than him, and is smiling, laughing, excited. The other one, taller, has the same symbol on his sleeve.

Uchihas.

He hadn’t seen any in the five days of shopping and training and sleeping and cleaning that he’d done. To be fair, he hadn’t looked at many adults at all, keeping his head down whenever possible. He seemed to attract attention without meaning to-- probably the damn hair and damn blue eyes-- but none of it was good. None of it friendly.

Five days and Naruto had spent them all alone. Shopping alone. Training alone. Sleeping alone. Eating alone. Cleaning alone. No one at home. No one to call his name.

To come from a clan, a family, a life, where all knew his name and many called him over in greeting, it was heartbreaking.

Naruto took that heartbreak and turned it into fuel for the anger that churned in him, burned in him, grew in him.

And now heartbreak was here again.

Uchihas in front of him. Alive and young and smiling and-

He didn’t know their names, didn’t know who they were but they were _family._ Naruto wanted family more than anything.

He caught up to them before he thought to tell his feet to do so. His hand was up and he had just about caught the arm of the boy his age when he was stopped.

The taller one, with dark eyes and a somber face, with long hair pulled back and a gleaming piece of metal over his forehead, caught him by the wrist. He stared up into the utterly Uchiha face and saw the family in his cheekbones, in the shape of his eyes. Naruto grinned. This one, this one was related to him. To _Izuna._ Not directly, no. Izuna had died before he had had any kids, but maybe Madara?

There is hope in his throat and he turns his hand because _so what_ if he was reaching for the little one, if the big one is Uchiha too, he’ll have them both. They’re family. He grips the taller one’s arm, squeezing once, feeling someone else’s skin and muscle and bone under his hand for the first time since he woke up in this weird place. His hand his brought to the side, but that’s okay too.

There’s faint amusement in that face. In the arched eyebrows and the slight tilt of the head. Ah. An Uchiha more like aunt Masuyo, not like himself, not like Madara. Not raging fire and spitting anger but strong like stone and tempered like steel. A somber protector. A tempered defender. The eternal shield. Just as invaluable and just as precious.

And then the boy speaks, “What is it, Uzumaki-san?”

Naruto chokes on his hope like a mouthful of rotten fruit. “I’m _not.”_  He says it without thinking. He tugs on his arm, skin stung by the warm grip now. The boy lets him go. “I’m _not_ an Uzumaki.”

He isn’t. He will never be. All those spirals are gone. He burned them himself. Not with a katon, no, but out on a training field at sunrise he had burned them to ashes.

The amusement fades into wariness and curiosity.

The younger one interrupts, “Who are you then? Why are you talking to nii-san? He doesn’t have any time to spare on runts like you.”

They’re _family,_ Naruto reminds himself. He has to, because he has a kill list already six people deep and he should not add family to that list. Instead, he glares at the boy, “I was going to talk to you, actually,” the lisp is slightly there. He’s missing another tooth in the front, now. He’d pulled it himself when he noticed it getting loose.

There was no time to be a child, not in this world, not in his old life. He had to grow up. He needed strength.

“Why?” The boy wrinkles his face up and Naruto wants to smack him.

It turns out that want translates into action when you’re five years old because Naruto’s hand is in the air again, aiming for the boy’s face without him even thinking to do it.

Again, his hand is caught. This time, his wrist is squeezed tightly. “Do not.” The older boy says.

When Naruto yanks on his arm, he is not let go.

Anger. Naruto is angry. This is wrong. This is _so_ wrong. He pulls harder on his arm. “Let me go you damn brat!” He wants his own body back but wanting it doesn’t make it happen this time. If he was just a few years older he could truss this kid up by the ankles in a tree with ninja wire and let the Inuzuka find him and torture him a little before rescuing him. (He would have to rescue him, because the brat was weak, weak and little and _just a child like he was.)_

Naruto closed his eyes. _Family. They’re family. Clansmen. Children._ He opened his eyes.

“I am Naruto.” He meets he taller one’s gaze. His tongue curls around the words _Uchiha Naruto_ but he knows better than to say that to these two. “Just Naruto.” He leans in, instead of trying to pull away. “Now who are you, Uchiha?”

The older one doesn’t speak. Naruto thinks he’d be hard to break. You’d have to know exactly where his cracks were, what buttons to press.

The younger one does the talking. Younger brothers usually do, Naruto knows, that’s how he was too. (He refuses to draw any more similarities between him and the little one. He will not be the snotty little brother anymore. He has no older brother. He has no one. He has no family.)

(Something inside of Naruto breaks and stays broken.)

“I’m Sasuke and this is my brother, Itachi,” Sasuke declares. “He’s the best ninja there is and one day I’m going to be just like him!”

Itachi glances to the little brother with the faintest exasperation to his expression. Big brothers, they never change.

Naruto feels hollowed out, suddenly. He shouldn’t have reached out to these too. They’re brothers. They’re close friends. The protection. The exasperation. It’s so familiar it cuts him open.

Itachi’s attention has slipped just a little, just enough. Naruto yanks his arm back suddenly, his tiny wrist, tiny hand, sliding right out of Itachi’s grip. He hops back a step and glares at them both. His thoughts are on Madara. His big brother. The best ninja of his clan. Not the world, no. That, he grudgingly has to admit is Hashi-fucking-rama.

(Hashirama with his goddamn face on the cliffside. Tobirama, Izuna’s murderer, carved in the rock beside him. Naruto wants to break stone, since there’s no Senju bastards left to kill.)

Instead, he drops into the vulgarity that has protected him from the staring villagers and spits onto the dirt at the feet of the Uchihas. Itachi looks vaguely disgusted. Sasuke’s cheeks flush in anger. Sasuke is more like him and Madara than his brother, Naruto sees, and knows that he’ll be easy to push around. He’s got buttons all over the place.

“Like hell he is,” Naruto said with a grin. “He’s just a bitty brat of a shinobi. And you’ll _never_ become like him. Not if you cling to his side and slink in his shadow, you little fuck.”

Sasuke’s eyes go wide, so wide, and Naruto is satisfied with his barbs. The boy shakes with anger, most likely, and Naruto turns that grin to Itachi.

Itachi with his narrowed, suspicious eyes. Naruto cocks his head to the side and turns his grin to a sneer. “I’m not wrong. A tree doesn’t grow in the shade and big brothers cast the tallest shadows, even if they’re really only the size of a bush.”

“Take that back!” Sasuke somehow comprehends the insult, or at least that it is an insult, to his brother and lunges for Naruto without thinking. Naruto slides one foot back, brings up one hand ready to beat the little brat down, knowing that he can take anyone his own age at least, when Itachi intercedes. Fucking big brothers.

Gripping the back of Sasuke’s shirt, Itachi holds him back. “Sasuke,” his voice is soft and chilly. He’s icy. He’s the kind of fire that’s so cold it burns. “Calm down. His words are nothing to us.”

Naruto laughs and shifts back into a relaxed stance. Itachi glares at him but Naruto’s seen worse on Madara’s face so he just laughs some more while the Uchihas hurry off to the academy.

Putting his hands behind his head, Naruto begins to walk again. He hopes to be put in Sasuke’s class. He can’t wait to crush the brat again and again. It would be the only way he could get stronger. Sasuke needed something to throw himself against, a rival, competition, someone who would laugh at him and shove him down and make him _want_ to get back up to fight.

Sasuke was an Uchiha. Sasuke was clan.

Naruto was not going to let his clan wither away into weakness.

* * *

Class itself is like going to a inter-clan gathering.

Sure, there are plenty of nameless children. Civilian born, perhaps. Or just from less notable shinobi lines. Lots of dark haired kids in dark clothes hurrying to pick seats near their friends like it’s a picnic or something.

The Uchiha kid turns out to be in his class, after all, but he’s got a buffer of cousins around him, one on either side. He shoots poisonous glares at Naruto the moment the blond walks into the room.

That’s fine. Naruto will be the thing Sasuke flings himself against. It’ll be good for them both.

The thing that’s _not_ fine is that there’s an Inuzuka, a Yamanaka, a Nara, a _Huuyga_ of all damn clans, and even an Akimichi there. And if the faint buzzing coming from the kid in the coat is any indication, there’s an Aburame here too.

All that’s missing is Senju, Hatake, Sarutobi and, of course, Uzumaki. And those are only some of the clans that he can remember from the top of his head.

Naruto doesn’t reach up and rub at the place on his shoulder where his clan symbol would have been if he hadn’t removed them all. Instead, he walks in and drops into a seat surrounded by non-clan kids. He wasn’t going to be an Uzumaki representative, no matter what was expected of him. The very idea of it made him shudder.

The girl beside him on his left was as plain as could be. Short brown hair pulled into two pigtails, glasses to hide her eyes and long sleeves on her shirt. She looked up at him nervously. Naruto smiled. “Hi. I’m Naruto.”

She twiddled her fingers together nervously. “Hana.” She didn’t smile back, though. Just looked desperately around as if searching for another seat, anywhere else.

Naruto turned away from her.

On his right was a striking girl. Her pink hair fell in her face but did nothing to obscure the sharp jade green eyes that bore into him. She wore simple dark green clothing; a three quarter sleeve shirt with cloth wrappings from her hands to the sleeve, covering her forearms, and loose dark pants. The brightest, most jarring thing about her was the pink hair.

“Haruno Sakura,” she said without prompting. “Nice to meet you, Naruto.” She smiled at him. He smiled back.

When he looked back to his left, the other girl had found another seat.

Their teacher arrived before he could talk to Sakura anymore. Not that he wanted to, really. Friends outside of the clan was not something Izuna had been known for.

Without a clan to fall back on, Naruto wasn’t quite sure having friends would be worth it, in the long run. Allies, maybe. Teammates, perhaps. But friends?

What were friends but family without commitment?

Naruto wanted to build a new family.

* * *

By the end of the first day, Naruto is sure of one thing. The hatred and fear that the adults regard him with has trickled down to their children. When he stands at the teacher’s instruction to introduce himself- “Naruto. Just Naruto. I am not an Uzumaki.”- there is a visible reaction to the other kids. They pull back from him, scooting chairs away and giving him frightened, hostile looks.

There are a few exceptions, of course.

Haruno sits calmly at his side, not even paying attention to class, with a book out on her desk. Uchiha, Sasuke, leans forward, glaring at him- too annoyed to be afraid. The Hyuuga girl hasn’t even looked up from her hands since she stammered through her own introduction and Naruto is certain that the Nara at the back of the room is asleep.

The rest, though, they frown at him and mutter and back away like he’ll lean over and bite them right then and there.

The avoidance in class is more pronounced everywhere else. In the hallways, Naruto has his own personal space bubble that the other kids refuse to burst. Out in the training yard where a tired chuunin is attempting to teach them what katas even are, Naruto has a circle around him that’s ten feet in diameter.

Naruto doesn’t care. It makes it easier to keep an eye on everyone else and to rile Sasuke up with scrunched up faces and wads of paper flicked at his back.

It’s juvenile, but Naruto _just didn't care._

By the end of the _second_ day, the kids behind him have been swapped out for the Nara and Akimichi boys. The previous brats thought it would be funny to throw things at Naruto in class. Or to whisper and make fun of him.

Naruto isn’t very proud that he made a pair of five year old boys cry so hard their faces were purple and their noses ran, but that didn’t stop him from doing it. They never stood a chance against him.

Nara’s not so bad to have behind him, as he just acts as though class time is nap time. Akimichi isn’t bad either, besides the rustling of his snacks. Neither one bother Naruto, though, and that’s what matters.

On his third day of class, well…

If making kids cry wasn’t something to be proud of, making an adult cry certainly was.

His whole class had to spend the rest of the afternoon with their physical education chuunin instead of their regular sensei. They ran races (Naruto won). They climbed trees (Haruno got highest). They did target practice (Sasuke won). And somehow the teacher got over a dozen five year olds to meditate (Nara probably won that one) before it was time to go home.

The fourth day was long and boring.

Nara and Haruno kept whispering about books. Naruto doodled fish on blank notebooks. His teacher didn’t even look at him and Sasuke was too smug about winning target practice the day before to be any interesting.

Near the end of the fifth day and the first week of Academy classes, Naruto knew that if he didn’t find something to occupy his mind while stuck in that damn building, he would become even more crazy than he probably was already.

That was probably why, when the teacher was going over some of the basic math, Naruto lay his head on the desk, facing Haruno. He stared at her, because at least she was interesting, if all she was doing was _reading._

She had glanced up at him, rolled her big green eyes and pulled out another book from her bag. “Here,” she said, “Make yourself useful and learn _something.”_

Naruto scowled, but took the book from her. He looked at the title and narrowed his eyes. It was a book about the clans of Konoha. “Yeah?” He asked, “But I know all this stuff already.”

“A clanless little brat like you knows about the clans of Konoha?” She asked in a whisper. Her mouth was turned up at the corner in a sly little smile. “Who taught you?”

Naruto opened his mouth to retort- _I’m not clanless. My clan taught me about the others when I was taught how to fight-_ and stopped himself just in time. Shutting his mouth with a snap, he glared at her. “Fuck you,” he snatched the book from her hands. “I bet I know all this stupid stuff already. This book is going to be a waste of my time.”

Haruno seemed completely unphased both by his tone and his choice in words. Which was more annoying than Sasuke’s smug little face. It was also way more interesting than anything else had been in the last two days alone. “Anything that makes you a better shinobi isn’t a waste of your time.” She looked back down at her book and added, “I won’t tolerate weak shinobi when I become Hokage, you know. If you don’t meet up to my standards, Naruto, I’ll just have to get rid of you.”

Blinking, Naruto leaned back from Haruno. He looked at the book in his hands, dumbly, before craning his neck around to try and see what she was reading. Half the page was diagrams and equations while the other half was solid text.  He wasn’t close enough to read it properly and couldn’t figure out what it was just by looking. “You can’t get rid of me,” he finally muttered.

Haruno smiled at her book. “I can do anything I want to, once I put my mind to it. You’ll see.”

Unnerved by her words, Naruto fidgeted in his chair. He tried to pay attention to the teacher but she was talking about addition and if he had to focus on _her_ he’d put a rusty kunai through his eye socket. Eventually, he opened the book Haruno gave her and began to read.

It turned out to have information he _didn’t_ know and therefore wasn’t a waste of time.

Haruno was right.

Naruto had a sinking suspicion that she was going to be right about a lot of things.


	3. My Brother Would Never

The man that comes to fetch him to meet with the old man at the end of the week wears a mask and slouches, just a little, on Naruto’s doorstep.

He’s just finished eating -lots of raw greens, some nuts he found growing in the trees at the training field and a bit of the charred fish from yesterday’s fishing expedition (really, the giant ice box thing was a treasure)- when there’s the light tapping at his door.

Naruto waits, expecting the person to just waltz in. When they don’t, he walks over, wary.

Naruto is an orphan, he’s learned. Naruto has no one. No friends. No one to visit.

“Who is it?” He calls through the door. He’d finger a kunai, but he can’t afford one yet. The ones he finds lost at the training fields are too damaged to be any good for anything.

“A friend,” comes the reply. It’s an adult male. Unfamiliar.

Naruto hesitates a moment more. He doesn’t want to grow soft in this village of sloppy shinobi. Unlocking the door, he opened it slightly.

The mask gleams in the hallway light outside his apartment. It looks like a bird’s head. Naruto has seen a few of these masked people around. Occasionally, he spots one outside on the roof across the street from his apartment. Sometimes, he sees them race across the rooftops on a mission.

Masked ninja. Special ninja.

A special ninja is here, at his door.

There is something more to his being a little orphaned boy than he had figured.

“I don’t have friends,” is what he says as he opens the door. “But you’re welcome to enter.” He steps back, still watching, still wary.

The man enters. Naruto closes the door behind him and takes a few steps back.

The man lifts the mask from his face and gives Naruto a little smile, “Hey kiddo. The Hokage sent me to bring you to his office. He thought you’d like to tell him about your first week at the academy.”

Naruto recalls the old man, asking to see him later, and recalls the third face on the cliffside.

(He has stared at that rock a lot this last week. Madara’s face should be up there. It should be second. This village was his dream too. He has never hated Tobirama more.)

“Is he my grandfather?” Naruto asks.

The man’s mouth twists like this is hilarious, but out comes a steady, “No. He’s not.”

“Is he my godfather?”

“No. He’s your Hokage.”

Naruto has never had a Hokage before. He’s had a father. He’s had a brother. He’s had a clan leader. He’s had clan elders. But never a Hokage. He’s never needed a shadow to his fire. He narrowed his eyes, “Does he ask all the students about their first week at the academy or just the orphans?”

The man blinks. No wry humor twists his lips this time. Instead, he crouches down to Naruto’s level. Naruto doesn’t flinch, but tenses. The man doesn’t reach out to touch him and Naruto is really beginning to wonder about the self that was before he woke. Did that Naruto know this person? Were they really friends? Were _they_ related somehow?

(Naruto knows he is an orphan. But blood, any blood, of any distance, is a good place to start building a family and that is all that he wants.)

“You’re a special case,” the man admits. He looks concerned. Few adults have that expression on their face when they look at Naruto, so he remembers when he does see it. (Mostly they fear him. He’s not sure why but he exploits it.) “Are you doing alright, kid? You seem a lot more tense this last week. Have you been having a difficult time with the other students?”

Naruto stares at him for a minute. Slowly, he shakes his head. “No. They are the ones having a difficult time with me.”

“Ahh,” the man rubs at the back of his head. His mask sits on the side of his face like a demon in a myth. “The Hokage can talk to you about them. I’m sure he’ll know what to do.”

Naruto blinks. “I know what to do.” He doesn’t want help from the Hokage.

(Sarutobi, Naruto remembers. They went over that in class. The Hokage was Sarutobi Hiruzen. A Senju friendly clan. Naruto remembers and Naruto _hates.)_

“Oh?” He gets asked. “And what’s that?”

Naruto grins. He shrugs his shoulders, “Just an idea I had.” No reason to tell this man anything. “I’m trying it out. See if it works.”

“Aw, c’mon,” the man grins back. “Sounds like it’s interesting. You always have the best pranks, Naruto. Why not share with me?”

“I don’t think we are friends,” Naruto says, taking a step back. “I don’t know any men who wear bird masks. You might know my name, but that doesn’t mean anything. Everyone in my class knows my name and they are not my friends.” So many people in the village know his name and they treat him almost like an enemy.

There’s something special about him, or else why would the Hokage care?

“You caught me there,” the man says after a moment.

Naruto briefly wondered if, perhaps, this man had introduced himself to the other Naruto, the one that is definitely gone. Then the wonder is gone. Crushed by his will. He has no patience for it. In fact, he has little patience for this conversation. The sun is going to go down soon and he wants to train outside while he can.

“Usually you’re satisfied with calling me Hawk-san. But if you really want to, you can call me Genma,” he says. “I guess you’re growing up. Going to the Academy. Wearing grown up shinobi clothing. Making friends and making trouble…” He gives a lopsided grin, “Sounds like you’ve got everything under control, Uzumaki Naruto.”

Naruto flinches at the last name. It’s a reaction to the stifling of the urge to spit that he is _not_ Uzumaki. _Uzumaki_ is the bride of the Senju bastard’s older brother. In no way is he part of that clan.

(It’s in his blood. It’s in his skin. Naruto’s just glad it’s not in his hair or he’d really go mad just by looking at himself in the mirror.)

Naruto manages to keep from scratching at his arms from sheer force of will. It makes him have to take deep breaths to keep from panicking, but he manages that. Even if he is five, he has to have _some_ control over his body.

“I do,” he says instead. “And you can tell the Hokage that I enjoyed my classes. I have not made any friends. My teacher tends to hover over me. I think the Uchiha brat hates me but that’s fine. He needs to hate someone if he’s going to ever surpass his brother’s shadow.”

Genma makes a considering noise. “Which Uchiha?”

“Sasuke,” Naruto replies. “The younger brother of Uchiha Itachi. Can you believe he walks him to and from the academy almost every day?” He rolls his eyes, folding his arms over his chest, “My brother would never coddle me that way.”

He realizes what he’s said the moment it’s out of his mouth. Naruto bites, hard, on his tongue. He winces at the pain- his teeth are so much sharper than he remembers them to be- and keeps his legs stiff. He won’t retreat. Even as Genma arches an eyebrow at him and doesn’t even have to open his mouth to ask the question. Naruto won’t retreat.

Genma asks it anyway, but not exactly the way Naruto imagined he would. “Your brother? So you _have_ made a friend then! Who is he?”

It’s such a blatant ploy for information Naruto would scoff if he wasn’t scrambling for something to say. His mind is busy and his mouth, his _stupid_ five year old mouth, says his stupid not-five year old thoughts out loud, “Friends are family without commitment. My brother is a brother first, a friend second.”

That’s how it’s always been, how it always will be. Even when he’s angry with Madara, when it feels like he’s got nothing in common with the dreaming, peace-seeking bastard, he’s still his brother. He would fight for him. He would die for him.

He did fight for him.

He _did_ die for him.

Naruto’s blinking, suddenly, because his side hurts thinking about the blade that tore into his torso and cut out the last of his life. That was the last time Madara held him, on that bloody battlefield. The last time he saw Madara’s face. The last words that he’d spoken to him-

 _You can’t trust the Senju_ -

He had been right. Right? Those had been the right words to say. Right?

Stupid five year old body with it’s stupid five year old tear ducts. “No one,” he says quickly. “He’s-” _everything._ All that Izuna had left. Father was dead. His other brothers gone. All that was left was Madara and Madara’s dream…

“H-he’s…” Naruto sniffs. Is the room shaking or is that him?

There was a village. It was just like Madara had wanted, right? It was peaceful.

(There were still shinobi, there would always be shinobi, even Madara had said that. But still.)

Had he left Madara or had Madara left him? Had he died for Madara or died so Madara’s dream could come true?

“H-he’s g-gone…” Naruto hates the tears like he hates everything about his too small, too young, too Uzumaki body. He covers his face with both hands, turning away from Genma. No. No. He can’t cry in front of another shinobi. Five years old or not he couldn’t cry.

(Naruto can’t remember the last time he cried. Had it been for a brother’s grave? Had it been for the death of a cousin? An uncle? An aunt? Had it been on that bloody battlefield, where Madara held him as his last breath cursed the Senju instead of-- instead of--)

“He’s gone!” Naruto weeps. His knees shake. His legs give up. He crouches, first, then kneels, curling up on himself as tightly as he can. “He’s gone. I didn’t… I didn’t…”

His last words had been a curse for some damn clan.

His last words should have been a blessing for Madara. A balm for his last brother. A forgiveness that they hadn’t gotten peace, yet. A demand, even, that Madara not let him die in vain.

But Madara had gotten his village, hadn’t he?

A warm hand runs across his back, patting, gently. If Naruto squeezes his eyes very tightly, he can pretend that it’s Madara, consoling him after the death of their last brother, Shinji. He turns into the embrace, lets the arms hold him against the chest and there he weeps.

“I didn’t say goodbye.” Over and over in his head. Tumbling out through numb lips. “I didn’t say goodbye.”

He cries until his face hurts. His eyes are raw and his throat is clogged and his senses stuffed with cotton. He cries as the man, Genma, holds him in his lap just inside the door to the empty, lonely apartment.

As he calms down, he whispers into the man’s chest, “He’s gone. They’re all gone. My whole family.” The sob tears itself out of his throat, but at least his tears are drying up, “Why am I doing this? Why even bother? There’s no one… no one to fight for…”

He could fight for himself, but why? For what? His dream had been to be like Madara, strong and well liked, but even better. To make Madara proud. To prove his strength to their father. To protect the clan from the dangers of war.

He was already hated and feared. To overcome that? To make people love him, respect him? How was that possible?

It would take so much effort to become strong again. So many endless years of training a new body, of struggling against the limitations he could only guess that this body contained.

Was it really worth it?

There wasn’t a war to fight.

Was it really worth it?

Genma stroked his hair and his back and held him. Naruto leaned against him. This body, this little five year old body, had such good hearing. He could easily listen to Genma’s heartbeat, even though his ear is against his arm and there’s cloth and possibly armor in the way.

His eyelids are heavy with his tears. The sunlight has faded. The hour of training he was going to use is gone. “I’m tired,” he finally says. Genma hasn’t said anything.  His pulse is racing like he had been sprinting through the woods. “I’m so tired. It’s not fair. Why did this have to happen to me?”

What was the point of reincarnation if he was just going to remember his past, regret his past, and not be able to change any of it? How could anyone let go of the weight of their first life?

“I know, kid,” Genma murmurs. “I’m sorry. You didn’t ask for this.”

Naruto nods, vaguely comforted by the thought that Genma agrees. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask for any of this.

(All he asked for was to be strong enough to defeat that Senju bastard. All he asked for was to be as strong as Madara.)

(He had failed on both accounts.)

“Let’s get you into bed, yeah? It’s been a long day.”

Naruto huffs out weak laughter. “It’s been a long life, Genma. A long, long life.”

The man says nothing as he stands, easily carrying the -starved, tiny, malnourished- five year old body in his arms. Naruto just goes limp and lets him. “Are you good at genjutsu?” He asks as they go into his bedroom. He’s already dug himself into a hole so he takes it a foot deeper with the addition of, “My brother was really good at them.”

“Eh. I do alright,” Genma says. He lays Naruto down on the bed and sits beside him. He removes his sandals and then pulls the blankets over him. “Why?”

“I was gonna ask if you could put me to sleep,” Naruto mutters as he curls up around a pillow. “I don’t want to see that red eyed bastard in my dreams… Laughing at me. That bastard…” He feels the touch of Genma’s hand on his hair.

As his eyes flutter close, he catches sight of one hand sign and can’t even muster enough strength to protest or even ask what it is. Then he’s asleep.

It is deep and it is dreamless.

* * *

Itachi shifts uncertainly.

It’s not terribly late at the Hokage’s office, but it feels like the dead of night.

It’s quiet out. The sun has set. The night noises are distant behind closed windows and thick walls.

He wears his mask. They all do, even though they don’t need to. They all know each other, both with and without the masks, but this is protocol and something about this weird mission that isn’t a mission needs some stability in it.

It’s been almost two weeks since Hatake reported Naruto’s change in behavior. The ragged removal of sleeves with the Uzumaki clan mark on them. The destruction of orange colored clothing. The throwing out of the packages and packages of dried ramen.

Itachi had been on guard on the third morning, because he was, as Hatake called him, _an early bird,_ and they had to change the guard rotation. Naruto was waking before dawn. Waking up and _staying_ up. And so Itachi had been watching him while the boy went to a corner of a training field and made a small pile out of cloth and burnt it.

Every piece of cloth was a patch of the Uzumaki swirl.

Sick to his stomach, not wholly understanding why, not really comprehending what he saw, Itachi watched Naruto burn away the crest that was, in essence, one of the very few ties he had to his parents.

It had been almost two weeks but within that time it was clear to anyone who had known the boy before that something, _something,_ had changed.

Shiranui, one of the other guards, one of the two unmasked men in the room (The other is the Hokage. No mask could ever hide who he was, though, not to those who stood here.) had just finished his report from his visit with Naruto.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out there was Trouble brewing with the boy.

(Itachi shifted again because his mind still wanted to refer to him as Uzumaki, but he can’t get that blue eyed, angry, disgusted look out of his mind when he’d called Naruto by that name and the boy had spat and flinched as if the word itself was a weapon.)

An unknown, unnoticed brother figure. Someone with red eyes haunting his dreams. A grief far deeper than that of a five year old orphan’s loneliness. The look on Genma’s face as he recounted the boy’s words _-I didn’t say goodbye-_ was not the look of someone concerned about a child’s weeping. It was the look of a man who had held someone in their arms as they grieved in an obvious, painful, inexplicable way.

Genma looks as troubled as Itachi has ever seen him.

The Hokage looks as old as Itachi has ever seen him.

“Somehow,” the old man says, “we missed someone getting close enough to Naruto that their departure, or death, caused such a rupture in his life that he has abandoned his name, changed his behavior and has, essentially, dramatically altered his entire personality. There are very few reasons for this. Even fewer, if you take into account the comment he made of the red eyes and skill in genjutsu.”

There is a pointed look here from the Hokage to him.

Red eyes mean, of course, Uchiha.

Itachi tenses and then makes himself relax. He knew nothing. He knows nothing. There is no need for guilt, even reflexive guilt. He wasn’t the only one who missed this so-called brother. Hatake did too and Hatake is more obsessive about Naruto than any of them.

After the pause, the Hokage turns his attention to the rest of the group. His head makes a slow pan as he spoke. “Things have changed. The monitoring needs to adjust to reflect that. Lurking outside the boy’s apartment is no longer enough. It’s time for a more hand’s on approach to his protection.”

If Shisui were here, Itachi knows his cousin would snort and have to bite his lip to keep from laughing. A hand’s on approach? With _these_ shinobi?

Again, the Hokage’s gaze settles on Itachi. He feels a sinking sensation in his belly before he even hears the words.

“You are nearest in age to the boy. You will have the easiest time in becoming close to him.” He stops as Itachi holds up a hand.

“Forgive me, Hokage-sama.” Itachi ducks his head and slides forward a step. “But I have already met him in person, outside of my duties, since his… change. He is purposefully antagonistic towards my younger brother and is not much better to myself. I don’t know what it was that gained his ire, in particular, but we have it and he seems incapable of letting the grudge go.”

Before, the little blond boy would have forgiven anyone if they were hurt enough that he felt sympathetic. But the boy that looks at him now with those same blue eyes doesn’t have the heart to forgive.

The Hokage makes a noise that could be thoughtful or disapproving. Itachi tries not to feel the disappointment against his skin like a blade, but it’s difficult. He looks up to the man, admires him in a way that he never has his own father. Sarutobi is as dangerous as he is dutiful. He protects his village the way Itachi feels like he would protect Sasuke.

To have the strength and the will and the ability to stretch out his affection to a whole village filled with people struggling and living and dying…

Itachi admires the man that has been his Hokage for most of his life.

“By recent accounts,” the man says, “Naruto has developed an increased interest in Uchihas. One can only assume that a recent interaction of some sort has inspired this, whether it be this so-called brother or unnamed red eyed man, it is still a viable direction to gain the boy’s confidence.”

Itachi hears Hatake take in a sharp breath, muffled under cloth and porcelain, and shift in place. He doesn’t look towards the man. He knows well enough how Hatake feels about Uchihas, in general, and Naruto, in particular.

If he had wanted to protect Naruto from mysterious and potentially dangerous people, he could have done more than become an ANBU guard for the boy. They’re close enough to be family -if not by blood than by connections- that his self-imposed distance from Naruto irritates Itachi on a vein-deep level. Family, after all, was important. Even to an Uchiha like him, who put village above clan, family was still the immovable third on his list of priorities.

“If it is acceptable,” Itachi murmurs, “I can use other resources besides myself to get close to Naruto. He has only met the Uchiha in his own age group and myself. There are others that are young enough to befriend him and old enough to be trusted with the task.”

The Hokage looks thoughtful for a moment before nodding. “Shisui can be trusted with this task.”

Itachi ducks his head and slid a step back into line. Of course his choice would be Shisui. His cousin was far more personable than he was. Less like the standard Uchiha and more like a congenial shinobi.

Hatake relaxes slightly, broadcasting his approval if one knew how to look for it.

Itachi put his hands behind his back and turned his attention back to the Hokage. With someone as vulnerable and valuable as Naruto, there was no way that his only plan would hinge on a sixteen year old Uchiha. The man was a genius and Itachi settled in to listen to what the new plan would be.

Whatever it was, if it was for the good of the village, he would do it.


	4. Wear the Belt and Get Used to It

The sun has risen enough to turn the sky into a single shade of sapphire blue, the same bright color that looks back at him in the mirror when he forgets and looks at himself. Naruto huffs in annoyance as he trots out to the training ground that’s become his own. He twirls scavenged kunai on his fingers, practicing the dexterity of his hands, working on the strength of his fingers, developing the callouses his hands would need, as he travels.

He gave himself one day without training, the morning after that grief and regret filled weeping, but Naruto hadn’t known what to do with himself if he didn’t train.

There weren’t any books in the apartment that were interesting (not that many books were in general) and the village was a small source of interest when the people in it were too afraid to talk to him or too hateful to give him a moment to prove himself as anything but the monster they whispered he was. (He was still working on that, still figuring it out. He was _five._ What could he have possibly done to earn that title?)

After that day, Naruto threw himself back into being a ninja.

So what if there was no war? There was still a need for shinobi.

So what if he had nothing to protect? He was still vulnerable himself. He needed to protect himself too.

So what if it would be annoying and tiresome to learn everything in a new body? He had been a warrior, a soldier, before, and knew that power didn’t come overnight. He had worked hard then, he would work hard now.

When he was strong enough to stand on his own, Naruto could find something to protect, then. He could build a new family then.

His preferred training field wasn’t alone that morning. Naruto stopped his twirling and held the kunai carefully. He was aware of the follower he had- had started actively looking for them after meeting Genma- but this was someone new.

Someone who was strong, and fast, but with an insane dress code. Green spandex? _Really?_

(But who was he to talk? He was becoming disgustingly fond of the orange pants that he still kept to train in. Without the swirl they were comfortable enough.)

The man in the green jumpsuit stopped his one handed, handstand push-ups and flipped to his feet. He gave Naruto a grin. “Hello youthful child! Welcome to this beautiful morning!”

Naruto winced. His body really, really did have quite good hearing. He rubbed at one ear with a hand and said, “Morning shinobi-san.” He wondered what his teacher would say, seeing him act so polite. He’d nearly brought her to tears on the third day with his behavior. Really, though, she was teaching children. She should expect them to be cruel sometimes. “Would you mind not shouting so loud? I have sensitive hearing and would like to maintain it so that it would be useful to me as a shinobi later in life.”

“Ah, apologies for my enthusiastic shouting.” The man grinned, “But is it not a fantastic morning? You must be out to enjoy the early hours of the sun and the peace of the village. Are you not?”

Naruto shrugged a shoulder. He went back to twirling the kunai. It was a memorized training from the life before. He could do it without thinking about it, even with clumsy fingers. “I guess. It’s the easiest time to get some training done. The fields are full later in the day and the academy hasn’t gotten to the strength and endurance training level that I need.”

“Oh ho? Is that so? You are a serious kid! Your youthful dream to become strong is inspiring to witness in one as young as you!” He gave a thumbs up to Naruto.

Naruto laughed. He couldn’t help it. The guy was ridiculous and, well, different. A good kind of different. Not afraid and not wary and not concerned. He fell outside the list of adults that Naruto had interacted with so far.

(He was being generous and considering Itachi an adult. He did have his a forehead protector, after all, which Naruto had learned was as good as being declared legally an adult.)

“My name is Naruto,” he said, grinning. “Who are you?”

“Maito Gai,” the man said with a thumb pointed to himself and a grin that flashed even in the meager amount of sunlight there was. “I am the Green Beast of Konoha! It is good to meet you, young Naruto!”

Naruto twirled the kunai around his finger, faster and faster. “Were you training just now? It looked like it. Do you train every morning?”

“Of course!” Gai nodded emphatically. “One does not maintain their youthful vigor if one does not train with the rising of the sun!”

With sparkling eyes, Naruto asked, “Gai-san, would you mind training with me in the mornings? Please?”

The pretty blue eyes this body was cursed with, blessed with, were far more expressive than the dark ones Izuna had been born with, but Naruto knew how to use them just as well.

Gai agreed and Naruto wanted to laugh in victory.

He’d get stronger. He’d become _the strongest._ He’d never fail to be strong enough again.

* * *

Class, after training with Gai, was utterly boring.

Naruto slept, most of the time, and read the rest of it. He didn’t need a teacher to tell him about weapon safety and pressure points. He knew all that shit already.

All her history lessons were pale mash compared to the books he borrowed from Haruno. Naruto didn’t even want to think about the simple math she had the other students working through.

The seat on his left remained empty. The seat on his right still had Haruno in it. She _looked_ studious enough, with a book out and a paper to write notes on. But the book wasn’t a classroom textbook and he saw her doodling more than taking notes.

She liked to draw eyes, he saw. Eyes and flowers all tangled together. Sometimes flowers with eyes in the middle and sometimes eyes with flowers for the pupil. Weird girl. Interesting. But really weird.

Even more interesting than the doodling and the bag full of books she carried with her to school was the belt she started to wear. It was a broad belt for a little girl and made of durable leather. It took a few days for him to figure out why it looked familiar.

There was a clasp on the side, a strap attached to the belt that was made for a sheath. Haruno had a sword belt on. Of course, she didn’t take the sword to their classes (a pity, since Naruto would have loved to try and borrow it from her to use in his katas), but she wore the belt anyway.

She caught him staring one too many times to keep quiet about it and arched an eyebrow at him. “What?”

He pointed to the belt, “That just for show? Or do you have an actual sword you can put on it?”

Haruno rolled her eyes. “My father says no swords at school. That and I’m _not old enough_ to handle live steel.” She scoffed, “So I just get to wear the belt and get used to it.”

“What good is getting used to the belt if you don’t get used to the sword you’ll wear with it?” Naruto asked, crossing his arms. He put his chin on them, adopting one of Nara’s sleeping postures with practice. Of course, with the posture came the need to settle in for a good nap. He blinked sleepily before noticing Haruno was frowning at him.

He added, “You should at least wear the sheath. That way you’ll be used to feeling it at your side, even if it’s not the full weight of the sword.”

“Tch,” the girl muttered, “What would you know about caring for a sword? I’ve seen the sorry excuse for kunai you have.” They were pretty shitty kunai, he had to admit, but he hadn’t _bought_ them, exactly. Most of the stipend he’d been given had gone to vegetables and a few sets of clothes. The rest was being pooled for an actual set of functional kunai, not training ones.

“I’ve got an excuse,” Naruto grumbled, _“I’m an orphan.”_ He yawned, his jaw cracking with the motion. “And I know about swords. Used to have one, yanno?” He snuggled his cheek into his arms more. “Shinrin kasai was the best sword a guy could have.”

Haruno was staring at him, her eyes so narrow he couldn’t tell the color of them. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” he turned his head away. Shit. _Shit._ He did not just say that. If there was any kid interested in history enough to have actually read about Izuna’s named sword it would have to be fucking Haruno. He certainly hadn’t seen it come up in any of the books he’d gotten from her, but he was reading mostly about the foundation of the village itself. Haruno had a different book every other day or sometimes two a day. She was definitely better read than he was. “Just wish that I could have a sword too. I think they’re cool.”

“Uh huh,” he heard her say. She shifted in her chair, making it squeak.

Resolutely, he did not turn around to look at her. Instead, he closed his eyes, evened out his breathing, and let himself fall asleep.

The next day at school, Haruno carried a sheath on her belt. Even though there was still no sword.

When he saw it, he grinned. Haruno puffed her cheeks out in annoyance, rolled her eyes, but eventually smiled back.

* * *

“Eh?” Naruto blinked owlishly at the man standing in his doorway. It was just before lunch on the weekend and he’d returned from his morning training with Gai-sensei to eat. His hair was still damp when he’d heard a knocking and went to greet his guest.

Genma shifted the bags in his arms to poke his head out from behind. “Hey kid. I brought some stuff for you.” He offered a smile, his senbon tucked into the corner of his mouth.

Naruto sighed and turned before Genma could see him smile back. It wasn’t easy for him to accept more than food from the man, but Genma was insistent and, well.

Naruto couldn’t let pride be the death of him _twice._ If Genma wanted to give him things out of pity or misplaced obligation, denying him would be foolish. Besides, Genma hadn’t asked for anything in response (not yet, though Naruto was waiting for that).

The man brought in the bags and put them on the table. One of them immediately began to sag to the side and he hurried to catch it, laughing a little. “Have you had lunch yet, Naruto?”

“No,” He said walking over. He pulled out the single chair and hopped up to get a better look into the bags. “What did you bring me?”

“Look at this bag first,” Genma said, pushing the floppy one over. “And good. My friend is picking up something for the three of us to eat and he’s headed over here now.”

“...He’s not bringing ramen, is he…” Naruto eyed the man suspiciously. Genma had said it was his favorite and while, yes, Naruto didn’t object to the taste he preferred spicier food than that.

“No no, he said it would be a surprise,” Genma insisted. “Now go on, open it up!” He pushed the bag closer.

Grumbling, Naruto opened it up. There was clothing inside, most of it dark colored and, it turned out, mostly shirts. Suspiciously, he pulled out one and held it up to himself. Huh. Kid sized clothes, but still for bigger kid than himself. He ran his fingers over the cloth on the shirt and found a small seam in the middle of a sleeve. Someone had stitched a hole up. So the clothes weren’t new either.

“...hand me downs?” He asked, “From where?”

“I used to help out with a couple other orphans,” Genma said. “They were older than you when I took them in, but you’re already growing some good shoulders, Naruto. These clothes aren’t any use to me now, so I thought you might like some.” He picked out one of the other shirts and tugged on the sleeve, “After all, you cut holes in a lot of your clothes recently.”

Naruto eyed him at _that._ It was the most Genma had ever said about the missing spirals since he’d first noticed them. He hadn’t been able to hide the sadness in his eyes when he had seen one of Naruto’s ripped shirts. Did he know the Uzumaki that had birthed Naruto? Did he know the woman that had been his mother? Genma hadn’t said anything either way, yet.

“I guess I’ll keep them,” Naruto said. Free clothes that were clean were better than none at all. Of course, they were all in the more modern style that Naruto still wasn’t quite happy about, but what could he do? He’d gotten a yukata to sleep in. That would have to be enough. “What else did you get me?”

“Well,” Genma said, “I’ve seen you started reading some pretty difficult books for class and I was thinking maybe you’d like easier books sometimes. Let your mind rest a little bit and just enjoy a story instead of the history and information you’re cramming into it.” He moved the bag of clothing aside to push forward another bag. He opened the top of it to Naruto and dug out one of the books. “Here, this one has a character with the same name as you, kid. It’s a fun action novel that I think you’d like.”

Naruto took the book and flipped through it. “...gutsy shinobi huh,” He stopped, reading a paragraph in the middle of the book and then closed it with a snap. “Well. I’ll keep it. Maybe I’ll read it.” He put it aside, “What else did you get me?”

Genma laughed and let Naruto rifle through the books on his own. There were comic books with their brightly colored covers and shouting characters. There were more fictional novels, some with pictures in them, some obviously for kids as young as he was. There were nature books as well, filled with glossy pictures of different animals and plants.

Those last books were the ones that Naruto lingered over. He slowly sat down in the chair, turning the pages of a book about desert animals. Trailing a fingertip over the images, Naruto saw lizards and small mammals he’d never imagined before. So much of the fighting had happened in the woods or grasslands- Madara had avoided the desert in their war campaign, just as previous Uchiha leaders had.

Even the pictures of the dunes were incredible to look at, swaths of sandy hills that looked like smooth red peaks contrasted sharply against the deep blue skies. Naruto turned the pages slowly, almost disbelieving. When he finally reached the book, he shut it gently.

Genma had busied himself by making tea while Naruto read. He smiled when Naruto looked up at the cup being placed on the table next to him. “What do you think?”

“I didn’t know books like this existed,” Naruto said quietly. He fiddled with the binding of the book as he spoke, “These paintings must have taken so much time to make. They’re incredible.”

“Paintings?” The man shook his head, “Those are photographs, taken with a camera.” He paused and scratched at the back of his neck. “I… take it you don’t know what photographs are? Or a camera?”

Naruto scowled, shaking his head. How was he supposed to know that? He was _five._ Well. This body was five. And cameras didn’t exist before, whatever they were. “What’s a camera?”

“It’s a device that uh,” Genma chuckled, “Well I think it uses chemicals to capture an image through a bit of a glass lense and uh. It gets transferred onto a film strip or something that gets a chemical treatment and…” His voice trailed off.

Naruto stared at him, not comprehending and not happy about not comprehending it. “Forget it,” He said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Naruto-” Genma started but was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“That’s your friend, huh.” Naruto frowned. He slid from his chair, holding the desert book to his chest, and went to the door. A new man stood behind it, holding bags of food in one hand. He gave a half smile to Naruto and lifted a hand in a wave. “Who are you?” Naruto asked. He didn’t recognize the man’s chakra, so he wasn’t one of the rotating guards.

“Raido,” the man said. “A friend of Genma’s.”

“You’re the one with food?” Naruto eyed the bags. It certainly smelled good, whatever it was. “You may come in.”

“Why thank you,” Raido said dryly. He walked in and greeted Genma with a, “Hey there.”

“I’m going to take this stuff to my room,” Naruto announced, “Go ahead and continue to make yourselves at home.” He scooped the bag into his arms, huffing out a sharp breath as he did so. It was heavier than he expected, heavier than his little arms could quite handle, but he grit his teeth and struggled with it anyway.

Naruto’s bedroom wasn’t the same mess it had been when he first woke up. The ramen poster and old containers had been removed first thing. The clothing that had laid strewn about the floor were now stuffed into the small dresser he had instead. Without any bookshelves in his bedroom, the books he’d begun to accumulate were stacked along the wall with the spines outwards.

Putting the bag down, Naruto began to stack the books inside along the wall. He hesitated when it came to the desert book.

Pictures and photographs. _Cameras._ This modern age was full of so many new things. Light switches and ice boxes. Cameras that took pictures with chemicals and glass and- Were there books on that too?

Despite Genma’s words about his books being only about history, Naruto’s collection had expanded into more nuanced pieces.  He’d found books on electricity- another marvel- and small inventions. Things that had made the world he knew obsolete. Things that had made this new world full of new dangers and wonders.

Tucking the desert book back under his arm, Naruto headed out of his room. His acute hearing picked up voices as he took a silent step out into the hallway, so he paused, listening.

“...different then them. I thought that experience would help more,” That was Genma talking. “I don’t know what’s going to be a hit and what’s going to piss him off.”

“And this time it was cameras?” Raido had an excellent voice for dry humor. He vaguely reminded Naruto of one of his cousins. “So get him a book on cameras. You said he likes books.”

Genma laughed, “Yeah, all right. That’s probably the solution. I just don’t want to overstep too much, you know? If the Hokage thinks I want to take him in and raise him like I did with our boys…”

“Providing him the information that he wants is going to take some effort,” Raido said, dropping his voice lower than before. “And if you’re questioned about your motives you can come up with something to explain yourself. Just don’t get flustered and you’ll be fine.”

There was the sound of a step, the rustling of clothing. Naruto breathed as silently as possible, wishing he had better command of his chakra so he could sharpen his hearing even more.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get flustered you tell me. Like I get flustered around anyone else but you.”

There was a snort of amusement. _“This_ might be an overstepping of boundaries, Genma. You’re on duty, aren’t you?”

Naruto turned. He gripped the handle of his door and shut it with a bang. With purposefully noisy footsteps, he walked back down the hallway. His fingers curled around the spine of his book and he knew he was frowning. He couldn’t help it.

There was a certain level of trust he’d given Genma, considering that he’d let the man into his house, let him bring him food, let him give those gifts. Maybe that trust had been born out of the fact that Genma had been there when he’d first wept for Madara. Now, though, Naruto had to wonder how soon after he’d gone to sleep that night the man had gone to the Hokage to tell him what had happened.

As he reentered the kitchen, he reminded himself that Genma was a hawk. A masked ninja sent by an old man to watch over _him._ A clanless little orphan boy. Raido was just as dangerous, just as untrustworthy, since he was a friend of the hawk. The men greeted him with smiles and pleasantries but Naruto had no more patience for them.

The food had been divided up while he was away. He hopped up to his chair and put his book down to the side. Looking up, he caught them silently communicating to each other, and sighed. “So,” he asked, “How long have you two been together?”

Raido answered him, “We were on the same team when the Yondaime was alive. We met before that, of course, but hadn’t been placed on the same team until then. Didn’t we turn chuunin at the same time?”

Genma nodded. He was leaning against the table, sipping his own tea. His senbon clacked against his teeth as he shifted it to the other side of his mouth. “What a year that was.”

Naruto eyed them for a moment, frowning. They were still young, couldn’t be more than twenty five or twenty six. Young for men, old for shinobi. Young for civilians, old for soldiers. Even if they hadn’t had field promotions, they undoubtedly served in the last war.

More importantly, though, they had served at the same time as the Yondaime.

He was the only one that Naruto hadn’t been able to get a history book of. His teacher in school only called the man the Yondaime, or the Yellow Flash, monikers for a hero and a legend, but not for the man. He was about to ask about the fourth Hokage, the youngest face upon that cliff face of so-called leaders of Konoha, when he remembered. Genma was still on duty.

Tending him was a ninja’s mission.

Naruto would have to dig for information from someone else. Probably someone with pink hair and as many books as a scholar. So instead of prying for more information about the nameless leader, he dug in an unexpected direction. Genma’s words _“our boys”_ and his tone when talking about being flustered. Well.

Naruto was five, but he wasn’t _just_ five.

“But how long have you been _together_ together?” He asked, bright and wide eyed with innocence.

“Eh?” Genma blinked, “What do you mean, kid?”

Oh. Playing naive. Please. An adult had nothing on a child about false naivety. Naruto resisted rolling his eyes with ease of practice. Instead, he leaned forward earnestly and said, “When I was in the hallway I heard you say that Raido makes you flustered. Doesn’t that mean that you’re special partners?”

Raido flushed at the words but Genma laughed. He waved his hand dismissively, “Special partners? What’s that all about? Raido and I are just very good friends.”

Naruto turned his gaze to Raido instead and asked, “Who did he mean by ‘our boys’?”

The tension in the air shifted subtly. Genma’s smile froze on his face and Raido’s gaze sharpened. Naruto stirred his bowl of food with his chopsticks and smiled in all innocence.

When they didn’t answer soon enough for his liking, Naruto said brightly, “I think you two have overstayed your welcome. Or should I say you’ve overstepped your boundaries?”

There was a click of metal against bone as Genma bit down on his senbon. The man gave a sigh and shook his head, “Kid-”

“I like that you bring me books and things that I need, Genma,” Naruto said, no longer smiling. “But I don’t like being spied on if I can help it. Please go.”

Raido and Genma shared a look and Genma ended up shrugging. “Fine kid, fine. I’ll see you later.” He gave a little wave and headed for the door. “C’mon Raido. We got beat this time.”

“But-” Raido started. Naruto glared at him and he sighed instead. “Okay. Fine. See you around kid.”

Naruto waited until they were both gone and he couldn’t feel their chakra anymore before he hopped down and locked the door. Scooping up his bowl and his book, he went to sit on the couch to look at the desert and eat.

Looking at pictures of the dunes, Naruto murmured, “Maybe I’ll go there first. I wonder what it’s like? Probably fucking hot and gross.” He grinned. It sounded like an adventure.

After the academy and this hellish village, Naruto was more than ready for an adventure. Anything that would take him far away from any memories of his home, of his failed brother, of the life and family he had lost before. Somewhere like a desert, where everything would be new to him, was the perfect place to start.


	5. What Would Be Enough

Standing in the river with the water almost to his knees, Naruto held perfectly still. He didn’t have the chakra control to walk on water yet, but that wasn’t the point of this exercise.

It was a warm afternoon. Class had ended for the week and Naruto was running out of fish at home in the miracle icebox. He seemed to be hungry, almost always, like his little body was making up for the Dried Noodle Atrocity that was once his kitchen. He easily went through at least one fish a day, sometimes two if he had a big lunch. 

His hands were poised in the air, his eyes on the water. 

“So much easier with a damn sharingan,” he muttered. 

He was still adjusting to that. It was the biggest limiting factor he’d come across, so far. 

The little body he had seemed to have bounteous amounts of chakra, though little control over it, but his eyes were just blue and pretty and normal. Average. Boring. 

He missed his sharingan.

But he could still fish without them.

His hand snapped down into the water at an angle and came up with a wriggling fish. He grinned and put it in the net that hung over his shoulder. It was made out of orange cord, a much better use of that orange jumpsuit than actually wearing it was. 

The orange pants, though, those had grown on him. He wore them rolled up to his thighs, to try and keep them dry. He wondered what Madara would think of his serious black shirt with the frivolous orange pants and smiled. 

“Ridiculous, that’s what he’d say.” It didn’t hurt, quite as much, to think about Madara during the day.

It was when he was in that little apartment all alone that it ached like the sword was still plunged into his organs. 

Naruto felt the trembling approach of chakra before he heard a voice call out, “Hey kid.”

A young voice, but not a child’s. Naruto reluctantly looked up from the water and stared.

Sitting on the other bank was an Uchiha. He had curly hair and an easy smile and looked to be in his teens. That pang of pain made Naruto draw in an uneasy breath. Sure, he’d seen a face a lot like that when he’d been alive as Izuna, but not that old. 

That little boy had been no older than seven the last time Izuna had seen him. Curly haired and bright eyed and beamingly happy for an Uchiha child during the middle of the clan wars with one surviving parent and an elder sister who fought on the battlefield with her cousins and clansmen. 

He lowered his hand, feeling soft and sad. It was Kagami’s face, but grown up and a little different. “Who do you belong to?” He asked.

The kid tilted his head to the side, “I’m an Uchiha, see?” He turned his shoulder, showing off the Uchiwa. “My name is Shisui.”

“Duh you’re an Uchiha,” Naruto rolled his eyes. “I don’t need a symbol to tell the blood. That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” He looked smilingly curious, just like that little long gone Kagami. It hurt but the pain was fading. Naruto could adjust to pain. 

“I meant,” he started, about to ask who the boy’s ancestors were, but stopped. He shook his head. “Nah. Never mind. It’s not important. What do you want?”

“Just curious,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone seriously fish in this river before. I mean, sometimes little kids go after minnows when they’re swimming in the summer, but not for real fish. How many have you got?”

“Three,” Naruto said proudly. “I’ve only been fishing for an hour, too.”

Shisui whistled in admiration. “Nice. Want some company?”

Naruto considered this. He took a breath and let it out. This body of his was good at sensing chakra around him. 

(He was Uzumaki by blood. They had talented sensors. He was trying not to think about that, though.)

Ever since he’d been trying to tap into his own chakra, with varying success, he’d noticed he wasn’t so bad as a sensor himself. So now he extended his awareness beyond the twenty feet distance of himself to check for his special ninja guard. 

Were they there or had they left him alone that afternoon? Sometimes that happened, though never often enough, so he just pretended not to notice them. Other than Genma, that seemed to work just fine for the rest of them.

Ah. There.

Naruto glanced out of the corner of his eye. A guard was watching. It was the little one, powerful and anxious, that Naruto not-so-affectionately had named Squab. He wore a bird mask of some kind and Naruto recognized his chakra from the walks he made with the bratty Sasuke to and from the academy. He knew it was Itachi.

He prefered Squab.

“If you don’t mind being watched by Squab, sure, join me.” Naruto shrugged and then looked back down to the water. He shifted slightly, changing his stance. The pebbles moved under foot, but he didn’t disturb them enough to raise any dirt into the water. Fish flicked past him as though his legs were two pale sticks, not flesh and blood.

Distantly, he noted Shisui removing his shoes and rolling his own pants up. The Uchiha started in from the other bank, moving silently, slowly, through the water. “Squab?” He asked when he stood a few feet away, his mouth twisted in humor. Enough that he could fish without being inside of Naruto’s range.

Naruto approved. Shisui was good people. Probably not here on his own free will, not with Squab being the one tending him now, but still. “Special masked ninja that follows me around the village. Not sure if they watch me sleep, but they probably do.” 

“Ah,” Shisui said. “That’s a bit creepy. Do you see them watching you or…?”

Naruto snorted. “Sort of. One of them comes over and makes it really super obvious. Brings me dinner, though, so whatever. The others are just weird shadow ninjas. I’ve got at least four.” He counted on his fingers, “Squab. Dog. Cow. Hawk.” He struck the water but missed the fish he was after.

“They don’t follow you all the time, do they?”

“Not always.” Naruto woke in the middle of the night, sometimes, and didn’t feel them. He also tended to lose Dog whenever he went near Gai-san and, of course, they didn’t follow him at school.

There was silence for a while. Shisui went after a fish and missed as well.

“So what’s it like?” Naruto asked after he’d struck and missed another fish. 

“What’s what like?”

“Being a shinobi in a village.” Naruto knew war. He knew missions related to war. He also knew families and clans. But villages, that was something he’d not really had before. His clan had been like a village, he’d always thought, but seeing a real one now he knew better. “Do you get cool missions? What do you do after you graduate the academy?”

Shisui laughed, “Did you go to become a ninja without knowing what they do?”

Naruto looked up at him, “Who should I have asked about that? My dead dad? My missing mom? My nonexistent siblings?”

To his sadistic delight, Shisui bit his lip and looked away guiltily. He turned back with a little smile only a moment later, though. A good recovery time for a blunder like that, Naruto thought. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget what being an orphan is like. Forgive me?”

Immediately, Naruto said, “Get me dinner and I will.” 

Shisui laughed. 

Naruto glanced up to the trees. Squab had gone off, it seemed. 

Shisui was trustworthy, then, at least to Squab. Good to know. 

“You bargain like a shinobi I know,” Shisui said. “You can get him to agree to most things if you offer him a free meal.” 

Rolling his eyes, Naruto said, “Free food is a good incentive for kindness.” He thought of the way Genma would show up at his little apartment, bringing in food like they were some sort of strange, comedic duo of friends. Even when Naruto wanted nothing to do with anyone, he’d still let the man in if he brought food. A night where he could eat his fill and not have to cook for himself was a good night. 

“What about being kind for its own sake?”

Naruto thought about the young Kagami. He had been so little but so kind. He couldn’t remember being so kind himself. Not even that kind to his own brothers. Teasing and testing and arguments came more easily than kindness. There had been, of course, moments of softness in those days, but now?

An empty, cold apartment waited at home for him. A village full of scared and suspicious adults was his home. And he was supposed to what, smile and tell them it was okay to let a five year old child live  _ alone?  _

“I’m kind,” Naruto said stiffly. “Where and when it suits me best.” He scowled down at the water. He saw a flicker of scale and struck.

Drawing a long fish from the water, he watched it gasp for breath, writhing in his little hand. He reached over his shoulder with his other hand and then slid it in without looking. 

When he looked up, Shisui was smiling, but his eyes were thoughtful, considering. “How long do you usually fish for?” He skipped lightly around their previous topic. 

“Until I’m bored,” Naruto shifted again, turning his shoulder to Shisui. He was beginning to mind the company, now. He had a feeling, though, that if Shisui left, either Squab or another one would show up. “Do me a favor and shut up for a while, will you?” 

Shisui hmm’d softly but didn’t say anything.

Naruto shot him a sharp look, but all he got was a smile. Huffing, he concentrated on the river again. Eight fish would be enough to tide him over for a few days. He tuned out the Uchiha and the village. He focused on the shine of scales under the surface and the cold water that ran around his shins. It was calming, almost meditative, and Naruto lost himself to the fishing.

By the time he got four more, the sun had inched lower in the sky and his skin was prickled from the chill of the water. Looking up, he saw Shisui had one hand holding three fish strung together on ninja wire and in his other he held a fourth, struggling in his grip. The teen flashed him a smile, his red and black sharingan spinning.

Naruto felt a pang of jealousy and loss at his own missing sharingan. “I’m done,” he said. He jumped out of the water, landing on the grassy bank, and shook the water from his legs. He lay his net on the grass and pulled the kunai from a pouch. It was one of the two that he had, the tip chipped and half dull, but it served its purpose.

Taking out the fish one at a time, he efficiently cut them open and gutted them. By the time he’d finished the first one, Shisui had joined him by the water’s edge. He hummed as he cut open his own fish, his kunai flashing in the light and his movements swift. “Do you want that dinner tonight? Because I think this fish would be an excellent idea. I didn’t know they were so big in this river.”

“Mm, fine.” Naruto was eyeing his kunai. Ugh. He really needed a pair of good ones. He’d never be able to practice his aim with the two he had now. 

Shisui saw him looking and winked. “Where’d you get yours?” He gestured idly with his kunai to the one in Naruto’s hand. 

“Found ‘em,” Naruto shrugged. If Shisui was going to try and take them from him, he was going to get some fish guts to the face. “In the woods by a training field.” At Shisui’s understanding hum, he added, “Can’t afford my own, yet. Not the kind I want.”

“You can’t?” Shisui cocked his head to the side. He frowned, “Kinda difficult to train to be a shinobi with worn out tools.”

“You’re telling me,” Naruto scoffed. He pulled waved his kunai in front of himself. “Look at this. I’m just lucky I have a sharpening stone at home so it’s not completely useless but the back side doesn’t fucking sharpen properly. At all.” 

Shisui gave him an odd look but then asked, “Doesn’t the Hokage give you funds? You could ask for some extra for weapons.”

“The less I have to talk to that old man, the better off I am.” The words came out harsher than they probably should have, but Naruto was not any better at keeping a handle on his anger as a five year old than he’d been as an adult in his last life. “I’ll figure out the weapon shit on my own. I’m only five. I’ve got plenty of time to get my hands on some decent weaponry before I go.”

“Go?” Shisui asked. “Go where?”

Naruto hunched his shoulders. Damn five year old tongue. He just kept  _ saying  _ things! First the brother thing and now this. “Dunno. Y’know. Just go.”

Shisui is silent beside him. His hands finish up his last fish and he rinses it out. Putting them back on the wire, he murmured, “You don’t have to go. Maybe you don’t see eye to eye with the Hokage, but that shouldn’t be the reason for you to leave.”

Naruto, pulling fishguts from his sixth one, flicked them at Shisui. The teen made a disgusted noise and jerked back as it hit him on the arm. “One man isn’t enough of a reason to drive me away. If I go it’s because I chose to go.”

“What would be enough to keep you here?”

“Why do you care?” Naruto glared at him. His fingers were dirty with fish blood and organs. The kunai he wielded with was slick with blood. “Why should I stay? Do you know how the people here look at me?”

From the somber expression Shisui gave him, he knew. Naruto narrowed his eyes. He might even know why. 

“No one should abandon their village. To train as a shinobi in the village and then to turn traitor and desert it…?” He shook his head. “Why train as a shinobi at all?”

“It’s all I know,” Naruto whispered. The water ran through the last fish in his hands and swept away the blood. He dropped it into the netted bag and stood. “Let’s have dinner another night, Shisui. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Kid,” Shisui stood as well, but when Naruto began to walk, he called out, “Naruto, wait.”

“Leave me  _ alone, _ Uchiha,” Naruto said without turning back. The bag of fish thumped against his side as he sped up to a trot and then to a run. His bare feet slapped against the ground. Dust stuck to his wet skin. He huffed out noisy breaths as he dodged around civilians and ninja alike on his way back to his apartment.

Most of the time, they saw him coming, though, and moved aside. Naruto ignored their staring, their muttering. 

He didn’t realize that he still clutched his kunai in hand until he was at his door and had to put it away to fish out his key instead. 

The apartment was cold and empty, just as it had been that morning, just as it had been after class, just as it always would be. Naruto kicked the door shut. He stomped into the kitchen and tossed the fish into the freezer section of the fridge. 

Staring at his fridge, at his empty kitchen, at the bare walls, at the single chair at the small table, Naruto said to himself. “What reason do I have to stay? None. None at all.”

Bitterly he stomped his way back out of the apartment. He had afternoon training that he still needed to do, now he was done with the fishing for the week.

* * *

Itachi paused as he walked past the dining room in his house. Shisui sat at the table, fist propped up by his chin. “Shisui?” He asked, stepping into the doorway.

His cousin looked up at him, a serious expression on his face for once. Absently, Itachi could hear his mother in the kitchen, preparing dinner. He could smell the fresh fish being cooked up. “Hey.”

“I thought you were spending the afternoon with…” Itachi let his voice fade out as Shisui grimaced. 

“Yeah. Pissed him off I guess, but, well,” Shisui sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what happened with him, but you’re right to worry about him.”

Itachi stepped fully into the room, frowning. He sat down across the table from Shisui and folded his hands in his own lap. “Tell me everything.”

With a bitter little smile, Shisui did.

* * *

“What part of  _ I don’t have any more patience for people today  _ does no one seem to understand?”

It wasn’t his idea to be sitting in the window of the tiny living room, but the Hokage had requested  _ hand’s on monitoring.  _ He had insisted it a second time to Kakashi, in private, a day or so later, with the somber and tired expression of an old man with too many responsibilities. Kakashi hadn’t said he  _ would.  _ He hadn’t promised anything. But he was still here.

The boy was covered in dirt and leaves. One pant leg was rolled up to his knee, the other one sagged just below it. His hair stood on end and there was dirt in the blond locks. His blue eyes were narrowed. There was a smear of blood on his cheek and his chin that had dried with no sign of any cuts beneath.

Kakashi stared at Naruto as the boy stomped into the room, shoulders squared and with an expression he’d never seen on a child before.

Not that Kakashi spent much time around children at all, but he spent a lot of time watching this particular child. Naruto’s face had taken on a darker edge to it about a week before he joined the academy. Even with Shisui’s report of the boy’s awareness of the village’s hatred for him and his own inclination to leave it behind when he had the chance, Kakashi didn’t know what could have spurred this development.

Kakashi shifted slightly from where he sat on the window sill. He lowered one foot to the floor, thinking he might try Genma’s approach (he’d seen him interact a few times with Naruto) and crouch down to his level. He still wore his ANBU mask, though. He wasn’t quite prepared to share his face. Not yet. 

Before he could, though, Naruto’s eyes, still pinned to his head, grew wide. “Your hair,” the boy’s voice was low, like a growl. He looked almost feral as he stalked forward. “Your hair is silver. Just like that bastard’s hair. Are you related to him?” 

Kakashi held still. He was leaning against the window, watching the boy’s advance with a mixture of surprise, confusion and slight horror. 

Was it the kyuubi? Was that what had happened, what had changed?

But no. The boy’s chakra spiked with his anger, but it was still small, still human. It whirled around him in his anger, but it didn’t have the edge of a maliciousness or killing intent inspired by the demon. “Related to who?” He asked.

“That Senju bastard,” Naruto spat out the name with a curl of his lips that showed teeth. Give him ten years or so, Kakashi thought, and that would be a frightening expression. At his current age, with missing teeth, he looked more like a homeless, desperate street urchin than a demonic child.

For some reason, that hurt Kakashi worse than the boy’s obvious anger towards him. 

“The Nidaime,” Naruto continued, “Senju Tobirama. Are you related to him?”

Kakashi blinked because… that was a connection he’d never even  _ thought  _ of before between him and the second Hokage. Was it the silver hair? 

From the way Naruto glared at the top of his head, not hidden behind the mask, he thought it might be.  

Kakashi shook his head. “No. I’m not. I’m not related to the Senju.” He opened his mouth to add,  _ but you are. So why do you hate them?  _ But couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“Yeah? Then what is your clan?” Naruto’s lips pulled down, slightly. He eased back onto his heels, his body language more wary than angry now, “Or are you clanless like some of the kids in my class?”

“Hatake.” He said, “I’m a Hatake.”

It was just a name. It was his father’s name, but it was just a name to Kakashi. He spent more time answering to Sharingan Kakashi than he did to Hatake Kakashi. Even if the Uchiha muttered about his supposed theft, it was what he was known for. 

So, if it was just a name, hardly used, hardly worn, why did it hurt to say?

Oddly, Naruto relaxed at this. “Hatake. Okay. The mask makes more sense now. I don’t know why it’s not a wolf, but, whatever. Squab is clearly not wearing the right mask either.” He abruptly turned towards the kitchen. “I still don’t want you here, though. I’m tired. I don’t have patience for any more secret ninja interrogations.”

“Interrogations?” Kakashi asked. 

Naruto sighed, said nothing, and walked into the kitchen. 

Frowning under his masks, Kakashi followed.

The boy walked straight to the fridge. He was muttering to himself as he pulled it open, saying something that sounded suspiciously like, “...can’t leave me alone for one goddamn moment, can they? Nooo, of course not. This is fucking worse than when Shinji was at my heels day and night for training tips…” He turned around and dumped an armful of vegetables on the table. Staring at Kakashi, he said, “You’re staying, aren’t you?”

Kakashi nodded. 

“And I suppose you want some dinner, don’t you?” Naruto frowned.

Kakashi shrugged.

Naruto stared at him for a moment longer before muttering, “If you can make some decent tea, you can stay.” Then he drew out a kunai from a pocket. Kakashi lingered, watching as Naruto tested the blade against a nail, grimaced, muttered something about “...shitty metal…” and began to cut up parts of the vegetables.

Tea, he thought, would take his mind off of this scene. 

Not well enough, though, as it turned out. The water was set up to boil and he’d cautiously brought over the cups to the table. Opening a cupboard, he found a small set of matching dishes. They looked new, still glossy clean and unchipped. He pulled out a pair of bowls and glanced to Naruto.

That kunai in his hand was chipped at the tip. The cuts it made were rough, jagged. The blade wasn’t nearly sharp enough for what he had it doing. Which, considering he was slicing up cabbage, spoke volumes. “Bowls or plates?”

“Bowls,” the boy said absently. “It’s not going to be warm food. And the chopsticks are down in that drawer.” He gestured with the kunai. “They’re clean. Genma washed them the other day when he bought me those dishes.” 

Kakashi set the table, noticing for the first time the singular chair. He frowned at that. There was a ratty couch in the other room. Was that where Naruto and Genma sat to eat?

(It was, sometimes at least. Kakashi had watched them eat together in there. Genma usually sat with his back to the window, but that was because Naruto often took the more strategic spot that allowed him to see the doorways and the window at the same time.)

Putting the vegetables in the bowls, Naruto pulled out a grilled fish from the fridge and deboned it with a skill Kakashi hadn’t seen in a child before. He watched, silent, considering, as the boy prepared their food efficiently and with the ease of practice that belied the fact that only a few weeks ago his greatest achievement in the kitchen was boiling water for instant ramen and not burning himself in the process.

“It's ready. Eat.” Naruto said as he put the scraps into the trash. He gave each one of them half of the fish and then licked his fingers clean. He pushed the bowl towards Kakashi and then, taking his, wandered back out of the kitchen. 

Kakashi looked down at the meal in his hands. It was small, but nourishing. 

A few weeks ago, Naruto would have thrown a fit over eating so many vegetables. Now, he was putting at least three kinds in a bowl with a bit of fish on top and calling it good.

No complaints. No argument. No twisting his arm. 

This was food he bought himself, fed himself. 

Kakashi marveled at how this orphan boy had a better grip on nutrition than he had had when he was thrust into a similar position as a child. It had been Minato who had made sure that Kakashi ate well enough to keep up with his growing body.

Naruto seemed to be doing that all on his own.

The kettle’s screeching pulled him from his thoughts. Gathering it, the cups for the tea, and his food all carefully into his arms, Kakashi went into the other room.

Naruto sat on the couch, cross legged, with a book open on his lap. He was frowning down at it, eating steadily. He glanced up when Kakashi joined him on the couch but his eyes quickly went to the tea. He picked up the cup that Kakashi poured for him, but before Kakashi could give any sort of warning of its scalding temperature, the boy held it to his face and breathed in the aroma. 

His eyes closed. A small smile touched his lips. Kakashi realized then that he hadn’t seen Naruto smile since he’d arrived. 

Putting the cup back down to cool, Naruto still smiled as he went back to eating in silence. 

Kakashi pushed up his ANBU mask enough that he could eat. When Naruto didn’t even show a twitch of interest to his face, he tugged his mask down and settled into eating at a more normal pace.

The silence, beyond their eating, beyond their breathing, beyond the turn of the page in Naruto’s book, was calming.

Kakashi felt himself relaxing as he fetched the last scraps of fish from his bowl. Licking his lips, he reached for his tea and sipped it. It was pleasant to eat it without the mask in the way. Naruto sipped his own tea, still smiling when he took in the aroma. It had a good spicy scent to it and a bite of citrus that was just on the edge of too tart. Closing his eyes as he drank, Kakashi let his sense of smell pick apart the scent of the tea and tuck it into his mind. This, clearly, was a combination of smells that Naruto found comforting.

Why, Kakashi didn’t know. But he wanted to.

When he tea was done too. Naruto finally stirred in his seat.

Kakashi pulled his cloth mask up just in time to meet the blue eyed gaze. He froze, staring at the boy who looked at him with tired eyes and an exhausted expression. “Hatake?”

Kakashi tilted his head to the side. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. The boy’s voice sounded just as worn down as his gaze. 

“I don’t expect you to really answer this, but I figured it’d be worth a shot to ask.” Naruto rubbed at his face and sighed. “Why am I here? In this apartment alone? I’m five. Shouldn’t I be at… at an orphanage or something? Maybe fostered somewhere? Did I have godparents that could help take me in? Anything?”

Abruptly, Kakashi looked away from him. Those pleading blue eyes were a dozen times more effective in the boy’s face than they ever were in the face of his father. Kakashi clenched his jaw tightly because a broken whine curled its way out of his throat and that was unacceptable. His hands, empty in his lap, tightened around each other until his knuckles were white.

He heard cloth on cloth as Naruto stirred.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy draw his knees up to his chest and lay his cheek against one. “Figures you wouldn’t say anything. Genma doesn’t either. Says it’s just the Hokage’s orders. I haven’t asked the others yet. Frankly, I don’t want to have to talk to Squab unless I have to.”

There was the soft  _ th-thump  _ of his feet hitting the floor and then Naruto stood up. In the dimly lit apartment, Kakashi noticed, he looked far more filthy with his dirt stains and bloodied cheek and half open eyes than he had in the kitchen. He didn’t look as thin as he used to, though. The change in diet had been good for him.

That, and probably the training he did every morning. With Gai no less.

Naruto gathers up their dishes without a word. Kakashi watches, silent, unable to move. He wished, abruptly, that he had put off the Hokage’s orders just one more day. Met the boy in the morning, perhaps, or during the day. Not now. Not at the end of the day when the five year old child moved like an old man gathering together his things at the end of a long, long life.

Getting to his feet, Kakashi reached out and took the dishes from Naruto. It was as close as he had gotten to him yet. Naruto blinked up at him.

“Go clean up and get into bed,” Kakashi said. “I’ll clean up dinner.” 

Naruto wrinkled his nose, but it was in amusement, not disgust. “Makes tea and does dishes. I guess you’re all right as a houseguest, mutt.” 

Kakashi blinked in surprise at the gruff but affectionate tone compiled with the insulting nickname. By the time he recovered, Naruto had wandered off to the bathroom. He heard running water shortly after the door shut.

Washing the dishes was a simple, methodical task that could easily let Kakashi’s mind wander. He didn’t let it. He focused on the soap, the hot water, the scrubbing of the bowl. When he was done with the dishes, he cleaned off the table that Naruto had prepared their meal on, and wiped down the small table by the couch that they’d put the tea and dishes on.

He noticed the book on the couch, closed but with a bookmark in it. He picked it up and turned it over to look at the title.  _ The Foundation to the Will of Fire: Senju Hashirama’s Guiding Light of Konohagakure.  _

Flipping through it, Kakashi raised an eyebrow. It was not a book written for a five year old. The historical text was wordy almost beyond reason and was littered with footnotes and references to other things. And yet, he’d seen the boy sit and read it without stopping, without any apparent confusion for at least an hour.

He set it back down, thoughtful. 

Senju. 

That was the clan that Naruto had asked if he was related to.  _ That Senju bastard. _

Not Hashirama, but his younger brother, the Nidaime. Tobirama.

Kakashi ran a hand through his hair. The gesture knocked askew his already off centered ANBU mask and he had to pull it off to straighten it out again. Grey hair. His father had had it all his life. He had been born with it too. 

Tobirama had, if Kakashi remembered correctly, silver hair and red eyes. 

What was it that Genma had reported? Naruto’s nightmares filled with a red eyed man?

What, if anything, did that have to do with his distaste for the Senju?

“If you’re going to stay the night,” Naruto interrupted his thoughts from the hallway. He had a towel over his head and with his blond hair covered and wearing, of all things, a sleeping yukata. “Then you’ll have to stay on the couch.”

Kakashi stared. He didn’t- He didn’t-

He didn’t look like Naruto at all, with that dark towel on his head and the dark blue cloth on his clean, tanned skin. He looked like a small lord’s child. It brought up memories of escort missions of the Daimyo’s relatives. He even stood with the natural ease of someone who was important and noble and knew it. Understood it.

The hunched, lonely blond boy that he’d seen only weeks ago, before the change, might as well have never even existed. 

If the Hokage was trying to bring that boy back, Kakashi knew then it was never going to happen. If he was trying to figure out what had happened to him, well…

Kakashi glanced again at the ratty couch. He thought of the broken kunai the boy used as a kitchen tool as well as kept on his body as a weapon. He remembered the small smile at the smell of the tea. He recalled the historical book with densely packed information. 

The Hokage would have to get that information from someone other than Kakashi. At least until he could prove, without a doubt, that this change was a danger to the village  _ and _ to Naruto. 

The boy was  _ five. _

He was Minato-sensei’s only child.

Kakashi was cursed, yes, of course, but to lose Naruto to the loneliness of this apartment, to the hatred of the village, when he was aware enough, awake enough, to notice that things were  _ not as they should be… _

“The couch will be fine,” he said. “Goodnight, Naruto.”

Naruto nodded. “There are blankets in that box in the corner. Genma left them here a few days ago. Goodnight.” He turned and walked away.

His footsteps were silent on the wood.

Kakashi frowned as he got out a blanket. Genma brought dishes. Genma brought food. Genma brought blankets. 

He had a fellow jounin to speak to, as soon as possible.


	6. Never Forget the Way She Looked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter references (very, very briefly) Hatake Sakumo's canon suicide. :(

“Have you got anything on the Hatake clan?” Naruto asked Haruno the next time he saw her in class. She had slipped into her chair just moments before the teacher walked in with a heavy sigh. Her bag was still on her desk and she rested her cheek on it, closing her eyes.

Whatever had made her late had kept her from tying back her hair that day. It was longer than he’d thought it would be and fell in her face so she had to brush it back with a hand. She was dressed normally besides her loose hair, but exhaustion seemed to sit heavily on her shoulders.

Naruto waited patiently through the teacher’s attendance taking before he nudged Haruno with his elbow and asked his question.

She blinked green eyes that took a moment to focus on him. When she saw him, she smiled and asked, “What was that you needed?”

“Hatake clan information,” Naruto said. “I have one as my guard rotation and I want to know more about him.” Haruno was digging through her bag of books, pulling out some so she could reach others. “Don’t tell me, you have something with you?”

“The last two Hatake clansmen were and are formidable shinobi of Konoha. Both of them were known outside of the village by different monikers.” She said, pulling out a book with a glossy cover. She began to flip through it. “The elder one is dead, now, but the younger one was touted as a genius. He became a genin when he was still a child. I think at seven, or so.” Finding what she was looking for, she held out a the book to Naruto.

It was open to a chapter somewhere in the middle, titled  _ White Fang and Sharingan Eye: Traitor and Hero of Konoha.  _ Naruto took it. Holding the place with his thumb, he glanced at the book cover,  _ Konoha’s Best and Brightest,  _ was the title. “Traitor and hero?” He asked, “Sharingan eye?”

“It’s not much, but it outlines their histories fairly well. The author of this book is a huge fan of opposites so all of their chapters have pairs like this.” She began putting her books back in her bag. “Read that and let me know if you have questions.”

“Okay,” he nodded, already absorbed into the book. He sat back in his chair, propping it up on the desk in his lap. Haruno put her bag down beside herself and turned around in her chair to talk to Nara.

Or pester him awake to talk to her, not that there was much of a difference since he was such a sleepy kid. Naruto ignored their conversation to read about Hatake instead.

A while later, as he neared the end of the chapter, Haruno leaned over to ask, “So? What do you think?”

That itself was unusual, as Haruno usually waited until he was done to ask about his thoughts. He shrugged a shoulder this time and said, “Almost done, hold on.”

She huffed and went back to her doodling while she faked listening to the teacher.

Closing the book, Naruto frowned. So Hatake had been raised by the man who caused the third shinobi war to start because of a botched mission? Well, ‘raised’ was probably the wrong word for it considering he had killed himself when Hatake was little. 

Yet it was Hatake’s history that was more interesting. This small chapter listed his genin team and Naruto’s attention had lingered on that of his fellow teammate, Uchiha Obito. It was Obito’s eye that Hatake had in his left eye socket, though the author could only speculate exactly what had happened for that exchange to have been made.

Naruto made a note to ask Shisui, who kept popping up at the oddest times, about Obito later.

Other than the Uchiha, Hatake’s genin team seemed normal. Well, apparently bad at surviving but normal. Both his instructor and two teammates were dead by the time Hatake had turned fifteen. 

“Unlucky bastard,” Naruto said, sliding the book back to Haruno across the desk. “No wonder he’s so distant. I mean, Genma is about the same age and he’s pretty normal. So is Raido, but Hatake?” He shook his head. “What a fucked up history.”

“I know,” Haruno said, taking the book. She held it in her hands, frowning sharply as if it personally offended her. Considering the jarring cover touting how the book held the history of over a dozen Konoha ninja and therefor was the best book to own, it just might. 

Naruto propped his chin on his palm. “I guess I can empathize with him, though. He lost everyone he knew and cared about while he was young. I know what that’s like. If you don’t have anyone there to help you with that loss, you can become closed off. It’s easy to become bitter and hateful,” he muttered, mostly to himself, “I’m surprised he’s so calm… though I guess that could be a facade.” 

“He’s broken,” Haruno whispered. “Isolated and broken. Just a tool in the hand of the Hokage. All he’s good for is to be used by other people, but it wasn’t always that way. Something could have been done  _ better.” _

Naruto paused. He glanced to Haruno. She sat with her hands tight as fists in her lap. Her gaze was down at her desk and her expression was furrowed with some mixture of sorrow and anger. She felt his gaze and glanced up. Her cheeks flushed with shame and she glanced away, biting her lip as though she were guilty of something. “Haruno?”

“Sorry,” She still wouldn’t look at him. “Sorry. Don’t mind me. Just thinking out loud.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Naruto said, reaching towards her. She looked like she needed a hug and it was so weird. “It’s not like you could have done anything to change what happened to him.”

Haruno jumped when he touched her arm. Her eyes were wide as they looked at him. Wide and glossy with a sheen of unshed tears.

“Haruno?” he asked again, really concerned now.

“I-” She began before biting her bottom lip so hard that it turned white. Shaking her head, Haruno got up abruptly. She turned and fled from the room, her shoulders shaking. 

Naruto stared after her in shock. There was silence around them and curious staring. Even Nara was watching, one eye open. “Huh,” the boy said, “I didn’t think she was capable of crying.”

“Shut up,” Naruto snarled at him. “Haruno didn’t cry.”

Nara gave him a look of utter disbelief and Naruto had to remind himself that the boy was five (that he was also five) and that five year olds cried all the time. Even he did. So surely, Haruno could cry.

But Naruto didn’t know why she was crying and hadn’t meant to make her cry in the first place. He wanted to get up and follow her, to talk to her some more, but didn’t think she would appreciate that. 

When the teacher started talking again, carrying on her lesson without looking at Naruto, without addressing him, Naruto sat back in his chair and scowled. Surely he hadn’t cowed her so much that she would ignore the plight of other students because he was involved.

Right? There was no way the woman was that scared of him.

The way her hands shook as she held her chalk and he stared at her, watched her teach, spoke differently, however.

Really, it was about time to discover his own secrets.

* * *

Naruto kept glancing to Shisui’s hand.

It was holding his own, which, in itself, was a little odd. 

(Naruto couldn’t remember the last time someone held his hand. He thinks it might have been when he was Izuna and Madara had taken it, squeezed it once, before that last battle.) 

Shisui didn’t seem to notice the staring, or the oddness of the situation. He swung their hands back and forth as he talked. “...which was pretty ridiculous, sure, but a great ending to the mission.” 

Shisui was chatty. Naruto was trying to pay attention, at least sort of, but he hadn’t stopped talking since he came across Naruto leaving a training field twenty minutes ago. He’d promised dinner, which is why Naruto had followed him, and apparently was throwing in free entertainment.

It was distracting, at least, from the fact that they were walking into the Uchiha compound. 

The Uchiha compound was so much like the camp from the war that Naruto was having a hard time breathing whenever he looked around. He slunk closer to Shisui’s side, half hiding behind him. They stared at him here and it was not like how the villagers did it. And not like the clansmen he remembered.

Naruto squeezed Shisui’s hand tightly.

“Hey,” Shisui said gently, squeezing back. “You okay, Naruto?”

Naruto was not okay. He wanted to go back home. Either Hatake or Genma could be visiting that night and that’s about as much company he could handle. 

This was too much, he was realizing, but now his hand was stuck and now he was in the middle of the compound and if he fled they would see him. They would know. They would call him weak.

“We’re almost there. Don’t worry, dinner with Mikoto-san is totally worth it.” 

Naruto glanced up. “Mikoto-san?”

“Yeah,” Shisui grinned down at him. “My aunt. She makes amazing food.”

“Why aren’t we going to your home?”

Shisui squeezed his hand, “You’re not the only one with missing parents, kid.”

Naruto stopped. Their arms stretched out between them as Shisui stopped a few steps away. He looked up at Shisui. The compound and the staring forgotten. He blinked up at Shisui, who smiled down at him, and asked, “You’re an orphan too?” 

“Sort of,” Shisui replied. “My dad’s gone. My mom’s terminal. In the hospital. She’s not getting out again.” 

Naruto looked away. He tugged on Shisui’s hand, but the teen didn’t let go, only stepped closer. “Hey,” he said, crouching down to Naruto’s side. “Sorry. That was kind of awful of me. Don’t worry. She’s comfortable there.”

He pat Naruto’s head, “C’mon kiddo. It’s just right here.” He pointed with one hand to a neat little house behind a low wall. “I bet she has dango waiting for us. Do you like dango?”

Naruto shrugged, staring at the ground. He squeezed Shisui’s hand, though, and followed when Shisui led him beyond the wall and up to the house. 

Opening the door, he called, “Mikoto-san! It’s me, Shisui! And I brought a guest!”

There was the sound of soft footfalls and then a woman stepped into view. Naruto sucked in a sharp breath, staring.

If he thought Haruno was cute, or attractive, or whatever it was that he felt for the snarky, pink haired little kunoichi-in-training, this woman was  _ beautiful. _ Naruto let go of Shisui’s hand, feeling dazed as he stumbled out of his sandals and approached her. 

She smiled, tilting her head slightly. Her long dark hair fell over her shoulder. She wore an apron over a tasteful dress and Naruto was in love. “Hello Shisui. Hello Naruto.” Her voice was just as lovely as her smile. Naruto walked up to her and hugged her. 

“Kaa-san,” he whispered into her apron, hugging tightly. “You’re so pretty.”

He heard Shisui snickering but didn’t care in the least. Mikoto pet his hair with her tender hand and Naruto looked up at her. “You look just like my mom,” he said reverently. She did. Tajima had been a soldier, born and bred, but he had won the heart of a devastatingly beautiful woman. Naruto could still remember the way Mariko had looked on that last morning before she’d died in battle. Her black hair shining. Her cheek dimpling under her smile. Her sharingan spinning. Beautiful and deadly. A perfect combination. 

She’d taken down three Inuzuka and their six ninken on her own, the day she’d finally died. 

Mikoto, in her dress and apron, with her long hair and dimpled cheek, was the spitting image of his mother, Mariko. “Welcome to my home,” she said, “Shisui has said a lot about you, and so have my sons. I’m happy to finally meet you. Why don’t you come in and have some tea?”

“Yes please.” He held her hand with both of his. “Shisui said that you have dango, Kaa-san?” 

She smiled even broader. “Of course I do. Itachi is very fond of it, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind sharing with you.”

“Oh. I think he would.” Naruto said gleefully. “But I would love to have some anyway.” Taking things from Squab was almost as much fun as throwing paper balls at Sasuke in class. Mikoto chuckled and ushered him towards the table. He gladly took a seat, smiling up at her. 

Shisui sat down next to him, stretching out and grinning. “I want some dango too, auntie.”  

“Mm, alright,” she smiled, “wait here.” She went into the kitchen.

The moment she was gone, Naruto turned to Shisui and said, “You should have introduced me to her last week, Shisui. Why did you wait? She’s amazing. I love her.”

Shisui laughed. Naruto realized that he sounded like an infatuated five year old child and he did not care in the least. She was just like his mother. He  _ loved  _ her. “How was I to know you’d get so attached? Mikoto-san is amazing, but I didn’t know you’d fall in love with her.”

Naruto frowned, “I’m not in love with her. For one thing, I am five. Way too young for her. For another, the man who has married her is very unlikely to let her get away if he knows what is good for him. Also, she looks like  _ my mom.  _ Like a warrior goddess. I am not going to marry my own mother.” He folded his arms over his chest.

“You remember what your mom looks like?” Shisui asked instead, chin in his palm. “I thought you were pretty young when you lost her.”

Naruto turned his head away. He had been young, sure, but not  _ that  _ young. He had gone out to his own skirmish with some Akimichi. Both groups had come back victorious, although the loss of his mother had been a grievous wound to the clan. The mourning for her had lasted twice as long as it had for his father, Tajima, who died years and years later.

“I’ll never forget the way she looked before she died,” Naruto whispered fervently. 

“Mm,” Shisui said nothing. 

Mikoto stepped into the room then, carrying a tray. It held tea and dango on it. She set it down and sat across from Naruto. “Here, have some.” She pushed the plate towards him and then poured the tea. 

“Thank you,” Naruto said with utmost politeness. He ate neatly, far neater than he had yet since he awoke in the five year old body, and smiled at her. “These are very good. The best I’ve ever, ever had.”

“You’re so kind,” she smiled. Naruto would kill people for that smile. He knew it in that moment and knew it was a fact that would never change. Ever. “To be honest, Naruto, I’ve been wanting to see you for quite a while. I’ve only been able to hear through my sons and through Shisui how you’ve been growing up.” Her smile faded. She turned her cup in her hands, looking down at it. “Would you mind telling me how you’re doing?”

“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Naruto said, leaning forward. “I’ll tell you anything.” 

And he did. She asked about the academy classes and he told her about Haruno who shared her books with him and the Nara boy who slept in the chair behind him. He talked about the clanless kids struggling and the clan kids who rode on the coattails of their clan teachings. He talked about the teacher who avoided him and didn’t scold him. He talked even about Sasuke, who he raced against at the school track on a regular basis, and  _ won.  _

She asked about his training outside of classes and he told her about running and strength training with Gai in the morning. He told her about the times that Genma took him to the jounin HQ and let him play with a senbon and a wall target while he filled out paperwork. He told her about Hatake, who showed up on the odd afternoon to give him kunai throwing lessons. He told her even about his sensory training, how he was really, really good at picking out his guards because he felt them the most. Not at a great distance, not yet, but he knew when they switched places.

She asked about what he ate and he told her about the fishing that he was so, so good at now. He told her about the nuts he found in the woods and the greens that he bought at the market. He told her about the different fruits he came across, some of them brand new, that he’d never, ever had before. He told her about Genma bringing him ramen sometimes and Hatake bringing bags of dumplings. 

She laughed at some of his funny stories and shook her head over some others. Once, she reached across the table and put her hand over his, squeezing gently, and kept his tears at bay.

When he’d talked his way through three cups of tea and twice as many dango sticks, she finally asked, “Is there anything that you want to know from me, Naruto?”

He looked down at the dregs of his cup and frowned. There was… one thing.

He glanced to Shisui, but the teen was just smiling blandly, toying with one of his own sticks. He hadn’t had nearly as much dango, but Naruto was already aware that he could put away twice as much as most people his own age or older. Genma always brought three bowls of ramen, after all, and he usually ate two of them.

(One day, someday soon, he’d find out why he could eat so much, why he needed to. But not yet. Not today. Today he had another question.)

Looking up at Mikoto, he imagined she probably expected him to ask about his parents.

Had he any interest in knowing the Uzumaki’s that spawned him, maybe he would have. She did have a kid the same age as he was, after all. It was likely that she knew at least his mother. He remembered how the woman who were pregnant at the same time, back in the camps, could become bonded like sisters. 

But he didn’t care about his parents, not the ones that he couldn’t remember, and he knew enough about the ones he did to not ask about them.

No. There was only one person who he cared for enough to ask Mikoto about.

“I’ve read a lot of the history books of the village,” he began. “I know lots and lots about Senju Hashirama,” and he did remarkably well in not twisting out that name with a sneer, “but not the other founder. The other man who wanted peace. Uchiha Madara.”

Mikoto blinked, genuine surprise on her face. “Uchiha Madara?” She repeated.

He nodded. “Can you tell me about him? What happened to him? Did he… did he get married? Have children? What… what did he do after the village was founded?”

The sad look that settled in her features made Naruto’s stomach clench. He pushed away his tea and the empty plate and put his hands in his lap. That way, it wasn’t obvious how they clutched each other so tightly his knuckles went white. 

“If you know about Senju Hashirama, then you must be aware of his brother, Tobirama?”

Naruto bit his tongue and nodded. He could see those eyes in his dreams, still, not as bad as when he first woke, but still there. Still staring into him. 

“Madara-sama lost his last brother in battle against the Senju brothers,” Mikoto spoke gently. Her eyes were on Naruto, dark and sad. “It was that loss that brought about the end of the wars, though. He was angry at the death of his brother Izuna. But not so angry that when Hashirama offered his own life in exchange, he took it over the peace. They put down their swords and together they built the village.”

“I know that part,” he said sharply, too sharply. Naruto hunched his shoulders. “I meant… after the village. What happened to him?”

“He brought in the Uchiha clan to Konoha. Like the Hyuuga and some of the other clans, he helped set up the compound so that we would always have a place. He placed himself and the clan in the service of the village as shinobi. He was the leader of the clan for years, but he never married. Though he cared for the Uchiha clan as his family, he never brought anyone close again.” She shook her head, slowly.

“Maybe, if he had, he wouldn’t have descended into madness.” 

Naruto took in a sharp breath. “Madness?”

“He spent a lot of time alone. Lived alone. Some of his private records show that he took missions alone as well. He was the head of the clan but he lived separate from it. Not above it, no, but isolated among his own family. Distant.” She paused, considering Naruto with a gentle look. She brushed her long hair behind an ear.

Naruto looked up at her. His fingers clutched at his own hands. His nails dug into his own skin. “What happened to him? How did he… How did it end?”

“He found a record that he believed told him the village wouldn’t be able to survive with both the Senju and the Uchiha in it. He tried to convince the clan and even the Hokage to change things.” She frowned slightly, “But they wouldn’t listen to him and he became even more upset. He left the village.”

“He left?” Naruto whispered. His nails bit into skin. His heart hammered in his chest. Madara had been alone. So alone. Why hadn’t the clan pulled him back into their arms? Why hadn’t he built himself another family? Why hadn’t they listened when he had warned them about the Senju? “Where did he go?”

(Why hadn’t Izuna said anything,  _ anything,  _ else when he had died? Had he done this? Had he focused Madara’s obsession on that other clan?)

“He took his journals with him when he left,” She said gently. “He didn’t mark a map. He didn’t tell anyone. No one knows where he went.”

“Why did he go alone?” Naruto leaned forward. “He didn’t have to be alone!” He choked on his next words,  _ I would have gone with him. I would have gone anywhere with him. Madara shouldn’t have been left alone with his fears!  _

“He chose to be alone,” Mikoto murmured. “Perhaps he didn’t realize that he wasn’t alone. After the death of his last brother, he was reported to fear bringing people close to himself. His entire immediate family had been killed. All the people he loved the most had been taken from him in an effort to stop the war and to shake his father’s conviction and then later his own. When Izuna died, perhaps he thought he couldn’t protect his most precious ones again.”

Naruto choked on air. 

It was his fault.

He had died and Madara had suffered for it.

His pain had been just a moment and Madara had suffered for years.

He lifted his hands, ignorant of the blood on his skin from the bite of his own nails, and covered his face with them. He kept choking on breath, unable to speak, to breathe, to think.

It was his fault that Madara had been alone.

If he had been faster. If he had been stronger. If he had been better. 

“Eventually,” Mikoto’s voice was still soft but somehow cut to the very center of him, “He did return. He came back to challenge the Hokage, Hashirama, and brought with him a chakra beast. They fought until exhaustion. In the end, Madara fell to Hashirama and died.”

“What about his body? Didn’t he have the mangekyo?” That wasn’t Naruto. He still couldn’t speak. That was Shisui, who sounded genuinely curious. He shifted closer to Naruto but didn’t reach out to touch him. Naruto knew that if he had, though, he would have started to cry. Naruto didn’t want to cry again. Not in front of them. 

“It isn’t… very publicized, where his body was found,” Mikoto admitted. “In fact, it was secreted away after the battle and put to rest in a place that no one but the Uchiha knew about to keep his eyes from being used.” She paused, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the table and then seemed to make a decision, “He was laid to rest near his last brother, Izuna.” 

Scratch that. Naruto didn’t care who saw him cry anymore. He let out a wretched sob. His fingers dug into the skin of his face. He wanted to rip it off. He wanted the bite of real injury to take away from the suffocating pain of his chest. 

Someone distantly said his name but he didn’t stop scratching, didn’t stop sobbing, until comforting but strong hands pulled his arms down and drew him close.

He knew at once it was Mikoto who held him. He smelled the jasmine of her perfume and the scent of tea and the sweets she had made on her clothing. She stroked his hair and held his hands away from his body. He grabbed her apron and twisted his fingers in it, sobbing against her. 

Somehow, he migrated from sobbing against her side to her shoulder, with his arms around her neck, as he sat in her lap. She rocked him gently from side to side, humming to him. Between one breath and the next, he sobbed, “My fault. My fault. Should’ve been stronger. Should’ve been better. ‘S’all my fault.” 

She hummed. She rocked. She held him. 

Naruto took all the comfort that he could from her, knowing it wouldn’t last. It never seemed to.

* * *

Itachi followed Sasuke into their house, smiling slightly. Sasuke tugged off his sandals unceremoniously, shouting, “Mom! I’m home! I brought Itachi with me!”

His feet thumped on the wood as he raced further inside. Itachi took off his own shoes, arranging them carefully by his brother’s. He noticed that Shisui’s sandals were there, as well as another pair of small ones. Ah. Naruto was here then. 

“Ugh, Shisui! Stop!” Came Sasuke’s shout from the dining room. Itachi rolled his eyes and walked in to find his brother struggling in his cousin’s headlock. “Lemme go!”

“Not until you say the password,” Shisui grinned as he knuckled the top of Sasuke’s head. Tossing his head back, he looked to Itachi, “Welcome home, ‘Tachi.”

“You’d best not let mother catch you doing that,” He chided as he sat down. There was tea prepared and so he poured himself a cup. “You know she hates it when you rough house at the table.” 

“Auntie’s busy,” Shisui said, but he still let Sasuke go, “And not just with dinner.”

Sasuke glared at him and ran his hands through his hair to straighten it out. He saw Itachi kneeling and calmly sipping tea and hurried to sit at his side and do the same. Itachi arched an eyebrow at his cousin, “You pawned off the boy to my mother?”

“I didn’t really get a say in the matter,” Shisui shrugged. “She kind of scooped him up herself.”

“The boy?” Sasuke asked, curious, “Which boy? Where’s mom? Mom?” He was frowning. Itachi could practically read the thoughts out of his brother’s head,  _ some boy is with my mom? Taking her attention from me? Unforgivable!  _

He sighed silently through barely parted lips. “I’ll go check on her.” He rose smoothly, regretting that his tea would probably be cold by the time he was done. He slipped quietly to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. “Mother?”

She stood at the stove, humming, stirring something with a wooden spoon in one hand. Her other arm held the five year old Naruto at her hip. His face was pressed against her shoulder. He had one handful of her dark hair and was audibly sniffling and hiccuping. He was  _ crying.  _

Alarmed, he stepped into the kitchen fully. “Mother? What happened?”

She turned to glance over her shoulder at him. “Oh, Itachi. Welcome home. How was training with Sasuke?”

“Fine,” he dismissed the question as quickly as he could, “What happened to Naruto? Did Shisui hurt him?” He could see a bit of blood around the boy’s temple, in his blond hair, but no cuts to go along with it. 

“No,” she murmured, “I’m afraid that was all me.”

Itachi gaped at his mother. She cleared her throat and he snapped his mouth shut. Still, he was stunned. His mother? Had hurt Naruto? But- 

“How? Why?”

“Accidentally, of course,” she said, returning her attention to the stove. “He seems very attached to founder’s stories. I think they’re covering them in the academy right now, aren’t they?”

“They just finished the lesson on them a few days ago,” Itachi said absently. He was already trying to think of the words to explain to the Hokage that his mother had hurt Naruto and made him cry. “How long has he been like this?”

“Mm, a while,” She admitted. “He’s calming down though. He’ll be fine by dinner.” She smiled to Naruto, “Won’t you, dear?”

“Yes, Kaa-san,” Naruto whispered so softly Itachi almost missed it. “Can I stay to eat?”

“Of course,” She replied. “You’re always welcome to have dinner here, Naruto.”

He pressed himself tighter to her side. Itachi closed his eyes and sighed slightly. The Hokage would forgive him, probably, for involving his mother.

He wasn’t quite sure, though. It sometimes seemed like his mother was at odds with the elderly man. “Shall I set the table, mother?”

“Would you please?” She said, “Thank you, Itachi.”

As he went to a cupboard and pulled out dishes, Itachi glanced over to Naruto.

Blue eyes watched him from just over his mother’s shoulder. They were red rimmed from his tears, but strangely cold. As though the weeping had only hardened the boy’s resolve to… whatever it was his goal was now.

That goal. That was what Itachi needed to find out. If he could discover the boy’s goal and tell it to the Hokage, surely they would all know where to move from there.


	7. We Take Care of Our Own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay, folks. Last week was just, whoo. What a week.

Fugaku had just finished tugging on his yukata when the door to his bedroom slid open. He paused, surprised to see Mikoto step into the room. At this time she would usually be down in the kitchen, putting together the final touches of dinner and making sure it was brought to the table. He gave her a little frown, one that deepened when he saw her serious expression. “What is it?”

“Do you remember when I went to the market last month,” she started, stepping close and speaking softly. Her voice came out in a rush, her eyes bright with a look that Fugaku knew well. His otherwise soft spoken wife was, as some might put it, quick witted. She had been a jounin before she had had Itachi, after all, and had been a captain of her own team as well. 

Itachi did not get his intelligence or his innate skill in ninjutsu from Fugaku alone. 

“And that little girl bumped into me,” she continued, her hand reaching out to his arm. Her fingers curled in his sleeve. Her gaze burned. She had figured something out and was sharing it with him, desperate for him to understand it too. “She took one look up at me and began to bawl. Do you remember me telling you that?”

“Yes,” he said. He put his hand over hers, giving her his full attention. He spoke as softly as she did. That alone would have been enough to make him think this serious. They had little ears in their house, little ears that walked on silent feet and didn’t always keep secrets of the clan to themselves. “I remember.”

Mikoto licked her lips, “That girl didn’t call me mother by accident or auntie or even ma'am. Do you remember what she called me?”

Fugaku fumbled for the word. It  _ had  _ been a month after all, and there had been some interesting things that had happened since then. But then it came to him, “Ah. Yes. Mariko. She called you Mariko.”

“Right,” Mikoto said, nodding sharply. “And at the time I thought she just mistook me for a relative- even though she didn’t look Uchiha.” 

Her hand tightened on his arm and Fugaku held his tongue. He only nodded back. 

“There once was an Uchiha woman with that name,” Mikoto said, even softer. She leaned in. He could smell the floral scent of her perfume, the clean scent of her soap, the smell of the spices she’d used to cook with. He put his other hand on her side, steadying her. “I haven’t checked the records recently but I know there is. Mariko was married to Tajima-”

Fugaku blinked, “Tajima is-”

“Yes.” She hissed, cutting him off. “Madara’s father. Mariko was his mother.”

“Mikoto- Why-”

“Shisui brought Naruto home with him,” She said, “Brought him to me, so I could talk to him.”

“He’s  _ here?”  _ Fugaku felt a chill sweep over him. When the Hokage heard about that-

“Itachi let him stay,” she said. Fugaku’s mouth shut with a snap. His hand tightened over hers, but she didn’t move, didn’t flinch. They stared at each other for a moment as Fugaku struggled over the bitterness of the Hokage involving his sons in this mess, for the Hokage having the first loyalty of his own firstborn. Mikoto nodded after a moment and said, “Naruto didn’t ask me a single thing about his parents. He just wanted to know about Madara.”

“His interest in Uchiha has reached my ears too,” Fugaku said, a little more sharply than he intended, “What does this have to do with that girl? With Madara’s parents?”

Mikoto let go of his arm and put her hands on his chest. She gripped the collar of his yukata, definitely wrinkling it. Fugaku went still and silent. He hadn’t seen his wife look this fervent since the day she found out Kushina had run off to the woods with her stupid, idiot, foolish husband to have her child in secret, without a proper guard. 

He held his tongue, listening to her now as he should have done back then. 

“That boy isn’t Naruto,” she whispered. “Not the same Naruto that Kushina gave birth to. That boy wouldn’t have cared about Madara, wouldn’t have even known that he existed.  _ That  _ boy wouldn’t have had a fucking emotional breakdown when he find out that Madara was buried beside his last brother, Izuna.”

“What are you telling me, Mikoto.”

In the heartbeats of silence before she spoke, he heard the faint footsteps of someone young and little in the hallway outside their bedroom. Mikoto froze, showing she heard it as well. In response, she leaned in and whispered into his ear. 

The words made Fugaku’s heart stutter, his breath catch. He jerked back, staring at his wife. She was utterly serious. 

A knock at the door sounded. “Mother? Father? The table is set.” Itachi’s voice was gentle, but Fugaku heard curiosity in it. He, too, knew it was unusual for Mikoto to speak with Fugaku alone like this before dinner. “...Please hurry. Naruto and Sasuke are… not on friendly terms.” There was a silent pause and then the sound of his footsteps passing again.

Fugaku, in all that time, hadn’t looked away from Mikoto. She stared back at him. Her words hung in the air between them. 

_ “Naruto is Izuna.”  _

* * *

Dinner passed like this.

Naruto sat at Mikoto’s side, between her and Fugaku. The adults sat in just a way to almost obscure their children from his sight, with Shisui across from him to serve as a buffer between Itachi and Fugaku. Mikoto had half of her attention constantly on Naruto, making sure he had enough food, smiling down at him, even running a comforting hand through his hair, over his back, when he felt an echoing of that utter sobfest that had happened earlier. 

Shisui bore the weight of conversation on his shoulders in such an easy way that, had Naruto cared that much to pay attention to it, he would have noticed it was practiced. Fugaku was sternly quiet. Itachi was tensely quiet. Sasuke was sullenly quiet.

Mikoto and Shisui gossiped about everything from soap operas (something Shisui gleefully explained to Naruto) to who was seen with whom in the ever scandalous and interesting world of jounins and their romantic entanglements. Both of these things were beyond Naruto’s realm of shit-he-cared-about but it made Mikoto laugh and kept the mood light at the table so he didn’t care that much.

Dessert was a whole thing.

A whole brand new thing. (Well, for this body anyway.)

None of his guards had ever thought, oh hey, let’s bring the five year old some cake.

Mikoto thought of cake.

“Kaa-san,” Naruto said in utterly reverent tones, “I wish you were my real mom. This is so good.” He said it while he pulled his plate closer to himself. The wedge of cake- chocolate cake!- was so big and was covered in pretty white icing with sprinkles -red ones!- and a strawberry. A whole strawberry. The size of his  _ eye.  _

He ate it first, trying to savor the berry and not fully succeeding. It was so good. It was the first one he had had in years and years- Izuna’s last strawberry had been a surprise gift when he was fifteen. 

Halfway through his slice, a second strawberry appeared on his plate. He glanced up at Fugaku, and the man met his gaze very briefly before returning to his own strawberry-less slice of cake.

Naruto had to keep his head down for a few minutes after that. Fugaku might not look anything like Tajima- but they were both the same kind of father. Stern, quiet, observant and willing to act on those observations. Izuna didn’t miss his father the way he did his mother or his brother, but the man had been a steady influence for his entire childhood. 

He had wanted to make Tajima proud of him, almost as much as he had wanted  _ Madara  _ to be proud of him. 

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, this made Naruto want to make  _ Fugaku  _ proud of him too. Maybe if he did- If he could make the Uchiha Clan head think highly of him-

The desperate need for family clawed at the inside of Naruto’s belly, even when he was otherwise satisfied with dinner and cake. If he could impress the current clan heads enough, maybe they could bring him into the clan. Maybe not as their own child, he’s not naive enough to think that that’s possible, not when they have their own two already and apparently Shisui as well. But to someone they trusted, someone who could be a better, well, guide and caretaker than his guards were. 

Naruto wasn’t precisely interested in new parents- Mariko and Tajima were more than enough- but someone to help him understand things like using his stove or who could go shopping for him and not get scammed for all their money- Someone to help him get the weapons he needed, to help him feel welcome. To help him feel loved again.

Sniffling, Naruto rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. Mikoto pets his hair again gently. He turns towards her side, clinging to her dress and hiding his face against her. Only with her does it feel okay to act five, to act the child he sometimes feels like. Only with her has he really felt safe for the first time.

Even with his guards in his house- sometimes  _ especially _ with them there- Naruto hasn’t felt safe. They clearly aren’t their out of their own desire to look after him. 

Not like Mikoto. Not like, dare he even think it, Fugaku.

“Are you done with your cake?” She asked, gentle and kind. Naruto nodded against her side. Then, suddenly, he pulled his head back, reached out a finger and ran it through the icing still on his plate. He popped his finger in his mouth and mumbled around it.

“Now ‘m done.”

She laughed and ruffled his hair, “How about we get you into a bath, hm? Come on. Come with me.” Mikoto began to stand and Naruto went with her. He lifted her arms and she swept him up into them. He distantly heard her instruct Shisui and Itachi to tend to the dishes and more clearly heard her ask Sasuke who he wanted to help him with his bath, her or Itachi.

“Nii-san,” the boy replied, still pouting. Naruto looked away from the brat. He clung tighter to Mikoto. 

“All right,” Mikoto said, “then be a good boy and stay with your brother.”

She carried Naruto out of the dining room, humming under her breath as she took him to the bath. Setting him down on the floor, she said, “I’ll get the water started for you, dear. Are you comfortable changing on your own?”

He nodded. He waited until she’d turned on the water and left with a, “I’ll get a change of clothes and a towel,” before he began to strip.  He tugged out of his clothes in a rush, eager to try out the bath. 

His apartment didn’t have one- just a shower- and he hadn’t had the funds to go to a public one. The only available places to bathe would have been that pond he found or the river, both ice cold and out in the open. 

The room filled with steam as the bathwater rose. He climbed in, sighing happily, and soaking. He didn’t have any injuries, but his little body had plenty of sores and aches. Training day in and day out usually caused that sort of thing. 

When Mikoto came back, she placed folded clothes on the counter and draped the towel over a bar. She turned the water off and then knelt down beside the tub. Actually, he noticed with a lazy, sleepy blink, she sat with her back to the tub, to him. Giving him privacy even while staying with him. 

“Naruto,” she said, speaking softly, “..Do you want to hear about your parents?”

He sank a little farther into the water, letting it lap at his chin. “Not really,” he admitted with a mumble. “...Why? Is that… bad?”

“I’m just wondering,” she said, “Because I’m worried you might be upset with them or not understand why they’re not here. You see… The Hokage was put in charge of you after your birth, because of the special circumstances surrounding your birth and the death of your parents, but I’m worried he hasn’t told you anything about them.” She turned her head slightly towards him, “Are you mad at them? For abandoning you?”

“They died,” Naruto said, frowning. “Unless they killed themselves, it wouldn’t have been their choice anyway. I can’t be mad at them for something they couldn’t prevent.”

She turned away again. Mikoto sat in silence for a while. Naruto slipped under the water for a minute or two before popping back up, gasping and wiping water from his face. He could see the slight frown from her profile. “...Did you know them?” he asked, “My parents?”

“Yes.” She said. Her voice was tight. “I was- Your mother- They were my friends. Your father was friends with Fugaku and your mother was my best friend. I was-” She stopped again. 

Naruto waited.

“I’m your godmother,” Mikoto whispered. “When you were an infant, you still needed nursing. I had just had Sasuke a few months before so I-” She hesitated and Naruto stayed silent. He didn’t think he could speak even if he wanted to.  _ Godmother,  _ he thought,  _ Mikoto is my godmother.  _ “I was your wet nurse,” She finally said. “You were such a tiny, lively little baby. For eight months, almost a  year, you lived here. You slept in Sasuke’s crib with him and I nursed you both. You were like brothers.”

The bathwater was still warm but Naruto felt cold. His stomach sank, suddenly too full instead of pleasantly so. “What happened?”  He asked.  His voice shook. “Why did you give me up?”

Mikoto whirled, a surprising motion considering she was kneeling. She leaned in and her expression was fierce.

_ Mariko,  _ he thought again, the face of his mother overlaying this woman’s with ease. They both had the same burning, intense expression. “I  _ did not  _ give you up,” she spoke, not as soft, not as quiet as before, “You were  _ taken  _ from me. I begged to keep you, Naruto. I begged the Hokage. I begged the council. I begged even  _ that man.  _ But they took you from me and they raised you in an orphanage until you were old enough to live on your own.”

“I’m  _ five,”  _ Naruto breathed out. “How is that  _ old enough?”  _

She closed her eyes, ducking her chin down. He recognized the emotion on her face. It was not guilt or shame but anger and bitterness. 

_ I’m going to kill the Hokage,  _ Naruto thought as he watched Mikoto shake with emotion.  _ And these council members and whoever this man is that she mentioned. I’m going to kill all of them.  _ His hands tightened into fists under the water.  _ They should have let me stay with her. They should have let me be an Uchiha.  _

“Why did they take me away?” Naruto asked. “You obviously care about me. You already had one infant and it sounds like you could take care of me too. Why did they take you away?”

Mikoto opened her eyes. They were dark, somber and shining. “I can’t… There’s a law. I’m not supposed to tell you.” For some reason, she glanced towards the doorway.

Naruto frowned. He turned his attention to it, tuning not his senses -because he couldn’t hear anything- but his sensor ability to the hallway. 

Someone lingered outside the door. Not just any someone. Squab.

He wanted to jump to his feet, snarling, calling Squab out on his eavesdropping. How dare he spy  _ on his own mother.  _ But then it hit him. Squab wasn't there to spy on Mikoto. 

Squab was there for him- because he was different now, because he was worrying the Hokage. Mikoto knew he was there and had spoken about some things, but not others. 

He wished that he could communicate silently with her. That he could have her write down what she wished to tell him. Even if he had to burn the note afterwards, he wanted to know, needed to know. 

Mikoto knew why she was special to the Hokage- but she couldn’t tell him. 

He licked his lips, “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. Can you… can you tell me about the time I was here, then? Please. I just… I want to be part of a family again. Could you please tell me what it was like when I was part of yours?”

He hated the look of heartbreak she gave him. Her hand shook as she lifted it, almost reaching to him but stopping herself. She placed her palm on the side of the tub instead. “All right,” she said, her voice not shaking even though her eyes shone with tears. “I can do that.”

And she did. 

Mikoto told him about how he had slept so soundly as a newborn, different than Sasuke in that way. He had been a screamer for attention, but simply being carried was enough to soothe him. Most of the time she was the one who carried him around in a wrap on her back, but in the evenings, Fugaku would take him and hold him. Sasuke, she said with a laugh, was already bonded so tightly to Itachi, but when she put Naruto in the crib with him, they curled up tight as twins. 

She told him about the first time he smiled, his blue eyes lighting up and his tiny fist nearly jammed into his gummy mouth. It had been late in the afternoon and he had just woken from a nap. Mikoto was feeding and changing him and singing to him. He had smiled then, his face turned towards her, watching her and he had smiled, smiled, smiled.

He did it again when Fugaku came home that night and, she admitted with a soft little laugh, she thought that was the moment that Fugaku had fallen in love with fatherhood all over again. 

Her voice did begin to tremble the more she spoke. 

As an infant, with Sasuke a few months older than him, Mikoto explained that Naruto rushed to keep up with his elder brother. Sasuke was sitting and rolling and worming on the ground long before Naruto was, but he could see that and it made him determined to become as strong as Sasuke. At least, she admitted, that’s what it always seemed like with him learning to roll over so quickly and demanding to be held in a sitting position. 

Mikoto laughed, wiping at her eyes, as she told the story of one rainy afternoon where Fugaku had come home early from his work and instead of spending the time in his office, he had played with Naruto. At seven months, he was grabbing everything to put in his mouth and could play peek-a-boo endlessly. Mikoto would walk past her husband’s study and hear him saying “Peek-a-boo!” over and over and it would make her so happy. 

Near the end of the eighth month, she had gotten ill. Spring time usually brought her allergies alone, but this time she had caught some virus. She has hazy memories of Itachi and Fugaku tending to her and to the two infants. Mikoto looked away, hiding her sorrowful expression as she told him about how she missed her two infants while she was ill. They were kept away to prevent them from getting sick too. 

But, she beamed, when she’d gotten better, she went into Itachi’s room only to find her husband and her three sons asleep in bed together, Naruto curled up on Fugaku’s chest, Sasuke a little curl on his abdomen with one tiny hand holding onto Naruto’s clothing and Itachi’s cheek pressed onto Fugaku’s shoulder. She had wished desperately for a camera but they didn’t own one. 

She bought one the next day and took as many pictures as she could.

The week after that, Naruto was taken away by the Hokage.

Mikoto’s voice faded off, dropping the bathroom into silence except for their breathing. Hers came unevenly, as she audibly struggled to keep from crying. Naruto’s hitched again and again as he strove to do the same. 

He could have had brothers- He could have had a family- He could have had loving parents- He could have-

He could have woken up to a houseful of people who he could learn to love instead of to an achingly silent and cold apartment. Naruto rubbed hard at his face, striving to keep calm. 

After a few minutes had passed, Naruto asked, “Kaa-san? Can I… Can I stay?”  _ Forever?  _ He wanted to ask, “Can I stay the night?” is what he did ask.

She hesitated and then nodded. “Of course you can.”

“And can I see those pictures?”

Mikoto beamed. “We can go look at them as soon as you’re done with your bath.”

Naruto smiled back. 

* * *

Itachi felt rooted to the ground.

In the quiet, his mother’s voice was plain to hear.

He hadn’t liked it, hadn’t really wanted to do it, but Shisui had had a point when he’d said it would be an ideal time to listen in. Mikoto could get a reaction out of Naruto unlike anyone else yet- A private conversation could reveal so much.

But Naruto hadn’t spoken much.

It had all been Mikoto.

It had all been half familiar memories spun as stories. 

None of it had really clicked until the last one, where she had been ill.

Itachi could remember that morning- the one where he woke up tucked between his father’s arm and his side. The one where there had been bleary blue eyes and a gummy smile and blond hair on one infant and dark hair and a scrunched up almost-crying face of another. He had forgotten about it- had put it out of his mind- had turned away from the memory of a second little brother.

Itachi wished he could remember how he had done that, because now he was  _ remembering. _

Remembering his mother with two infants, one on the back, one on her front. Remembering his father cradling a sleeping blond baby in the crook of his elbow at the dinner table. Remember Sasuke curled up with another child in his crib. 

Remember holding Naruto, so small, so happy, so bright. 

Itachi covered his mouth with his hand as his breathing became irregular.

He could have had another brother. One even smaller, one even more vulnerable than Sasuke.

He could have been there- to protect Naruto from the stranger that now plagued his nightmares. He could have been-

No.

Itachi  _ had been  _ Naruto’s family. 

_ “...two days after that, Sarutobi came to our home and took you away. He told us you would be safer, that we would be safer, but I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it, but I let him take you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry Naruto. I should have fought for you then.” _

The Hokage had taken his littlest brother away to protect him-

But he had failed.

Someone had hurt Naruto. Someone had changed him.

On silent feet, Itachi fled.

_ The Hokage failed. _

* * *

It was dark when Kakashi arrived at the Uchiha Compound, the sun having gone down and the stars coming out. While there were portions of the village that was silent, other parts came alive after dark with music and light.

The Uchiha Compound was not one of those places. After dark, those who walked the streets were quiet and respectful. They were as silent as the stray cats that paced the high walls or ducked from shadow to shadow.

Kakashi came over the wall and dropped into the street outside the Clan head’s house. He waited there for a moment, eyeing the building. There were a few lights on still, which was good. With a glance over his shoulder, Kakashi walked silently up to the front door. 

He didn’t hesitate to knock. There wasn’t really time for that. 

The silence from inside the house stretched on long enough that he knocked again.

There were soft footsteps and then the door slid open. 

Fugaku stood on the other side of the doorway, frowning. His expression was wary, his eyes looking beyond Kakashi for a moment before glancing over him. His frown deepened at what he saw.

Kakashi stared back at him. He knew what he looked like. He had spent the last five days out on a mission, only to come home, give his report and be turned right around to go fetch and check up on Naruto. Apparently, Shisui had brought him over for dinner.

Apparently, he had failed to return home afterward.

Apparently, although he hadn’t said as much, the Hokage was worried that Naruto wouldn’t leave on his own.

So he sent Kakashi- scuffed, bandaged, favoring his right leg from accidentally landing funny on his knee, and exhausted- to pick up said five year old and take him back to his tiny apartment. Kakashi hadn’t argued with Sarutobi- he was the  _ Hokage  _ after all- just had left as quickly as possible wanting nothing more than to go pass out on his own bed for twenty hours.

Fugaku broke the silence. “Hatake-san. How can I be of assistance?”

“Naruto,” Kakashi said bluntly. “He has to be taken back to his apartment.”

There was a sudden motion behind Fugaku. Kakashi’s frayed nerves jerked to attention and when he caught Mikoto’s expression over Fugaku’s shoulder, he couldn’t make himself calm down. 

“No,” she said. Her voice was low and harsh. He had never heard her speak that way before. “He is five and he is asleep and he is  _ happy  _ here. You cannot take him.”

Kakashi saw Fugaku’s jaw flex and his shoulders tense. He put up a placating hand, “Hokage’s orders.” This should have been a simple job, but of course no Uchiha would make his life simple. That would just be too much. 

“No,” Mikoto said again, though this time she was looking at Fugaku. Her husband half turned to regard her and Kakashi took the time to watch them both. Tense, unhappy- Mikoto was clearly upset, but from what he could see Fugaku’s anger matched hers. He was just better at hiding it. Or more willing to. 

“Don’t let him,” Mikoto whispered, “Don’t let him take Naruto away from me again. He is Kushina’s son- He is my godson- Fugaku-”

Kakashi shifted his weight. The Hokage’s fear was valid then. Sarutobi and the council didn’t want the jinchuuriki to fall into Uchiha hands -not again, not after Minato’s death, not after it was their fault the nine-tailed fox was there anyway- and so he had kept Naruto from them. For nearly six years that had worked. Naruto had had no interest in Uchihas and they, in return, had kept silent about the eight months Mikoto had nursed the boy.

Then everything had changed with Naruto’s sudden personality shift and-

Shit.

Kakashi had thought it might have been the demon- with such anger it was clearly a possibility- but the sharingan-

Surely no one had such skill in manipulation- in fucking  _ brainwashing-  _

_ Shisui.  _

Kakashi’s breath caught in his throat as his brain flit from thought to thought, from theory to conclusion and landed squarely at the feet of Shisui Uchiha- who bore a mangekyo of unparalleled danger. A plain sharingan couldn’t change someone’s mind so completely, so seamlessly, as Shisui’s mangekyo could. Kakashi knew this. He had been on a team with the boy and had seen him use it. 

But Shisui was loyal. Trusted by the hokage. 

**_“Shisui can be trusted with this task.”_ **

No. No. He could not be.

“He can visit again,” Fugaku said to his wife. “And we will speak to the Hokage. Perhaps he will be given permission to stay the night with a friend.” 

Kakashi doesn’t say that that will never happen. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s useful to say. 

“Please,” Mikoto said, her fists clenched together at her chest, “Let him stay.” She said this to Kakashi, but he couldn’t feel any compassion towards her. Only chill. Only ice. The Hokage's words bounce around in his head again.  Had Mikoto gotten to the boy? Shisui practically lived with them with his parents away. Shisui saw her as a mother figure, surely that would have some sway.

If she got to Shisui, could she get to Itachi?

_ Well of course,  _ he thought instantly.  _ She’s his mother. It was only a matter of time before their loyalties came back to their family.  _

“Either bring him to me here or I will go in and fetch him,” Kakashi said, stripping his voice of all emotion, even the typical mild tone he used. “These are the Hokage’s orders.”

She twitched as though his words stung her skin. Fugaku put his hand on her arm and leaned in, “I will bring him so as to not wake the others.” He leaned in further and pressed a kiss to her ear. Mikoto’s jaw clenched but she held still and said nothing.

They stood in silence, staring at each other. The night was quiet enough that he could hear someone down the street talking outside on their porch. He could hear the distant yowl of a cat. He could hear his own heartbeat, a regular thump in his ear. 

Fugaku returned with the boy on silent feet. Naruto was wrapped in a blanket, his mouth hanging open in his snoring and his blond hair a shock against the dark blue of the cloth. Kakashi frowned beneath his mask. He could make out the Uchiwa on the blanket. Fugaku held out the boy to Kakashi with an expression Kakashi couldn’t read. He didn’t like that. Not at all. Fugaku’s face had always been somber or stern or angry, as far back as Kakashi can recall. 

This … oddly tender expression doesn’t sit well in Kakashi’s gut.

_ It’s not just Mikoto who wanted to keep Naruto,  _ he thinks as he adjusts Naruto in his arms so the boy’s cheek is on his shoulder. He turns on his heel without a word, but before he can bound away, Mikoto speaks. 

“You protect that boy with your life, Kakashi.” Her voice is, for the first time, ugly. Ugly with bitterness or jealousy or just anger, he’s not quite sure. He glances to look at her with his one good eye and sees, to his surprise, Mikoto’s eyes are red with sharingan. She stands at Fugaku’s shoulder, trembling, and her husband is silent at her side, his hand behind her back. “Do you understand me?” She continues, “You will protect that boy with your life or else.”

He has to ask. The Hokage will want to know. “Or else what?”

The smile she gives him makes his hackles rise. “That boy is Uchiha,” she said, “And we take care of our own in life or in death.”

Kakashi shifts. Her words unsettle him but he can’t dwell on that. He tightens his grip on Naruto and doesn’t nod, doesn’t shake his head, doesn’t respond. He simply turns and jumps away with enough chakra to take him to the walls around the compound. 

As he carries Naruto home, he thinks up his report in the back of his mind. He focuses on Mikoto’s words, her expression, her tone. So long as Naruto had left the Uchiha alone, they had seemed content to do the same. Now, though, now that he kept getting involved with them…

Kakashi shakes the thoughts from his head as he slips in Naruto’s bedroom window. He lays the boy down, unrolling him from the blanket. Or at least he tries. Naruto’s hands are clutched so firmly in the cloth that he can’t pull it free. In his attempts to do so, Naruto rouses from his sleep.

The five year old mumbles and turns, blinking blearily up at him a few times. His eyes, of course, catch first on Kakashi’s silver hair. It’s illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the window. Kakashi blinks as he sees blue eyes settle on the top of his head. He doesn’t think anything of it. Naruto has already seen his hair, has already identified him as nonthr-

_ “Senju,”  _ Naruto snarls and he sounds more like an animal than a human. The air around them is instantly saturated with a blanket of vicious, violent Killing Intent. Kakashi is frozen. Frozen like he was that night when they raded that lab. Frozen like he was in the face of that village traitor and the strength of  _ his  _ Killing Intent. Frozen like a rabbit before a fox. 

Naruto bares his teeth - _ fangs, _ Kakashi thinks, seeing the length on them- and lunges up at him. His hands have abandoned the blanket and his nails are claws. Hooked and sharp and aiming for Kakashi’s visible eye. In that moment, in the weak moonlight, Kakashi sees blue eyes turn red, the whiskers deepen, and those fangs bared as Naruto snarls out  _ “Senju bastard!”  _ again like it’s a curse, like it’s a justification.

He’s paralyzed by that malicious aura up until the moment Naruto’s clawed fingers dig into his cheek and begin to tear. It’s the sudden jerky realization that both his eye and his mask are in jeopardy that makes Kakashi jerk back. He grabs at Naruto’s wrist with one hand, the other going right for the first thing he can think of to stop this from happening.

Kakashi shoves up his hitai-ate, baring his sharingan. He’ll just put Naruto to sleep- make him think it’s a dream-

Naruto twists violently from out of his grip, claws raking Kakashi’s hand as his fingers slip through and two small feet kick into his gut. Kakashi gasps for breath, has to keep himself from instinctively snatching up his kunai and goes for another bare handed grip on Naruto.

Except Naruto isn’t trying to attack him anymore. He’s halfway to the window, almost out of it and, shit,  _ shit,  _ his features. They’ve definitely changed. The kyuubi burns under Naruto’s skin, lava boiling right under a thin crust, and he snarls like a beast when Kakashi snatches him around the waist and drags him back into the bed. 

Panic burns through Kakashi, arcing like lightning through his flesh as he struggles to turn Naruto from his stomach to his back. The boy fights him constantly, with strength that he shouldn’t have, with chakra that oozes from his body like a bloody cloud. He has to sit on him to trap his legs. He kneels on one hand and even then feels it twist to sink claws into his skin, through his pants. Kakashi grips Naruto by the jaw with one hand, holds his wrist above his head and pants out, “Go. The fuck. To sleep.”

His sharingan burns. His chakra flares. Kakashi feels chakra exhaustion clawing at him the same way that Naruto is. All he wants is to curl up and sleep for twenty years. 

The genjutsu works. Naruto’s eyes droop. They flicker from red to blue to red and then settle on blue and human. His mouth goes slack and his eyes close completely. The malevolence vanishes. The killing intent is smothered. Kakashi does not sob in relief because he has been beyond tears for years now.

Instead he rolls off the boy, hits the floor and tells himself he’ll lay there for ten minutes. Just ten minutes. Then he’ll get up and go sleep on the couch like a good guard dog. 

Kakashi falls asleep.


	8. Echo With the Ringing Words

Naruto rolls over in bed once, then twice. He feels the edge of his bedding, the thick pad of cloth under his shoulder and as his body moves backwards he realizes he’s reached the edge of his bed and he is  _ falling-  _ His heart slams up into his throat, his arms scramble, flail for purchase and-

His back hits solid wood. 

But his shoulder is still on cloth.

Naruto opens his eyes and stares up at a high ceiling, the beams arching far above his head. The room is filled with a soft light, not the harsh sun that should pour through a single window. It is light diffused through thin walls, paper walls, and that comes from the yellow flame of oil lamps. 

Slowly, he sits up. His bedding is wadded around his legs, tangled around them. His yukata is half open from his movement in his sleep, so he reaches up to tug it shut and-

He holds out his hand, staring at it. Pale, long fingers are splayed out in front of him. Big. Strong. He turns it over. There are hard callouses from his sword. There’s that scar from the time he nearly lost his thumb. 

These are adult hands.

These are  _ Izuna’s  _ hands. 

He pats at his body and finds it’s just as he remembers. Broad chest, the tiny scars from battle wounds and training accidents, his legs are long again, pale again, muscular and showing no malnutrition, no starvation. He runs a hand through shaggy hair and nearly shouts in joy to find it’s black again, smooth and dark and perfect. It’s his hair. It’s his body. It’s his life. 

Izuna sits half on his bed, which lays directly on the floor, and slowly looks around. This is his room.

Not Naruto’s room, which is small and crammed with books and clothing and inadequate storage space. No. This is Izuna’s room. With scrolls and swords and weapons and, yes, clothing but it’s spacious and holds everything in the appropriate place and-

He’s home. He’s in his bed. Home. He’s  _ alive  _ and he’s  _ home.  _

Izuna throws the blankets off of himself and scrambles to his feet. Even in his haste he is silent in his step as he rushes for his door. He throws it open, calling out, “Madara? Madara!” Finding his brother is his first priority. Find Madara and then come to terms with his weird, fucked up dream about a fucked up little village that Madara built (would build?)  with that fucking Senju-

Oh.  _ Oh.  _ He can save him now. 

Izuna comes to a slow stop in the hallway. 

He can save Madara from his madness. He can stop him from bringing that chakra beast to the village. He can stop him from being alone. _ He can save Madara.  _

“Madara!” Izuna shouts again. He starts running down the hallway. It’s so much longer than he remembers but it still feels half of his senses are that of a child’s, as the dream of Naruto haunts his thoughts like a sharingan created memory. He looks for doorways and can’t find them. “Madara? Where are you?”

He turns a corner so sharp his feet skid and he slams his elbow into the wall. Wincing, he stops to rub at it. Where is his brother? He can’t help him, can’t save him, if he can’t find him to warn him, to stop him-

Looking up, Izuna sees a doorway at last. He smiles, straightens up and walks quickly down that long hallway to that tall door. It’s locked, but he has his chakra and his strength and some shitty black seal isn’t going to keep him locked in his own house.

Izuna pulls the door open with a sharp yank, expecting the door to lead outside, or at the very least to another room. What he finds are stairs. Stairs leading downwards and darkness.

Standing in the doorway, Izuna peers into the shadows of those stairs. He hears the soft dripping of water and the sound of someone snoring ever so softly. 

“Stupid,” he says with a fond smile, “What are you doing, sleeping down there, brother?” He reaches out, feels for the wall, and takes the first step down without another moment of hesitation. After all, he has a brother to save.

 

* * *

 

Kakashi wakes to a foot prodding him in the side. Between one breath and the next he has a kunai out and he strikes as quick as a snake. The tip of the weapon digs into wood where a foot once was and the offender has hopped back across the room. Kakashi’s on his knees, other hand reaching for his tanto only to stop once his fingers curl around the hilt. His brain has caught up with his vision and he realizes he’s not out in the field, he’s not even in his own apartment. The room is littered with children’s clothes and stacks of books and it’s Genma standing across from him, eyebrow arched and posture relaxed.

Slowly, Kakashi makes himself relax. He yanks his kunai from the floor and tucks it away. His legs shake as he gets to his feet, but he does it anyway. He’s apparently slept enough to regain some chakra, some strength, enough to soldier through until he can go back to sleep. 

Genma eyes him in silence for another minute before he speaks. “What the hell happened to you?” His gaze is on Kakashi’s face, on his cheek, and belatedly Kakashi reaches up. He winces at the scratches there, the dried blood, the tear in his mask. Adjusting his mask a little, he shrugged a shoulder.

“Naruto had a nightmare,” he says. It’s mostly true anyway. Naruto had seen his hair and reacted to it like it as one would to a nightmare, or an enemy. “But he should be fine now.” 

“Yeah?” Genma says in a way that makes Kakashi uneasy. He glances over his shoulder, his eyes sliding past the window -still shut, good- and settling on Naruto. The boy is curled up tightly, fist tucked next to his open mouth. The dark blue Uchiha blanket is wound tightly around him, although Kakashi is almost certain that their struggle would have shucked it off. Even if it hadn’t, Naruto kicked off his blankets when he slept, getting them tangled in his legs when he was too warm. 

And then Kakashi’s brain backs up, back to the window, back to the fact that the sunlight was dim, like dawn or twilight, except if it were  _ dawn  _ he would be able to see the sun. This is the light of twilight, the sun hidden from view, the night approaching. 

He and Naruto both slept the entire day away.

For Kakashi, with his exhaustion, this isn’t surprising. For Naruto, without any chakra exhaustion, this is very surprising. He should have woken up, should have woken Kakashi up when he rolled out of bed because Kakashi had been asleep on the floor right next to it. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t because-

“Ah.” Kakashi belatedly reaches up and tugs his hitai-ate down over his already closed eye. He had been asleep so it hadn’t drained any more than the most minor amount and he kept it closed naturally, even without it covered, so he hadn’t noticed at first but- Now he remembered. Now he knew for sure.

“I put him to sleep,” Kakashi says, aiming for a mild tone and reaching hesitant instead. “The nightmare- He woke up and clawed at me. He didn’t see me, he saw the man in his nightmares and wouldn’t listen to reason.” 

“...so you put him to sleep with your sharingan?” Genma asks, voice quiet with disbelief. “Kakashi, what the  _ fuck.  _ He’s the- And you used your sharingan on him?”

Kakashi reaches up again to touch his cheek, shifting his weight on his feet. His knee, injured first from his mission and again from those tiny clawed fingers, twinges in protest at his standing. Genma waits in expectant silence. Kakashi glances down at the boy again. He looks soft, small, harmless, bundled up like that. If he didn’t have those whiskers on his cheeks, one could forget about the demon fox he had packaged away in his body. 

“He attacked me with the kyuubi’s chakra,” Kakashi says, carefully, not wanting to be misunderstood. “Whatever nightmare he had, whatever he saw when he looked at me… It made him so furious that he tapped into the kyuubi’s malevolent chakra and his body… changed.”

Genma’s eyes are wide. His mouth hangs open just a little, the senbon almost slipping out. “What are you saying? What do you mean his body changed?”

“His skin turned red like the beast’s fur,” Kakashi speaks quickly now. His skin crawls at the memory, “He had claws. Fangs. Those marks on his face looked more like real whiskers. And his eyes. Genma his eyes were red too. He had its chakra. It burned under his skin. I could feel it.”

It had been a weight, a physical pressure. It had been a taste, of metal and fire. A smell of smoke and blood. The charge like electricity, but hot, burning like the crackle of fresh embers. It had been alive, living, screaming under Naruto’s skin and he had had it in his eyes and-

“Kakashi,” Genma as closer now, just a few steps, and whispering. “It’s all right. He’s normal now. There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Nothing-” Kakashi repeats in a mutter, “Nothing but nightmares so bad they draw out that beast.” Glancing to Genma, he says, “You’re on duty now, right?”

At Genma’s nod, Kakashi continues, saying, “I’m going to go report to the Hokage about...this. This nightmare problem can’t happen again. If it wasn’t me here to stop him…” his voice trailed off. Genma nods again and gestures to the door.

“Go ahead. I’ve got him.” 

Kakashi doesn’t bother with the door. The window is just as viable, as always, and he’s out it in seconds. The air is cool on his skin and he tries not to think about the fact that he can’t remember the last time he slept in a bed, or if he last ate yesterday or the day before, or that his knee aches bad enough to jar his whole body when he lands on roof after roof. He has made a mistake and he must atone for it. His bodily needs can wait until after he speaks to the Hokage. His exhaustion can be dealt with after he confesses his actions to the Hokage. He’ll be able to get food later. He’ll be able to tend his wounds later. He’ll be able to rest later. 

If not, well, he can sleep when he’s dead.

(Maybe then  _ his  _ nightmares will be gone, too.)

 

* * *

 

The steps are narrow and cold, made of stone not wood, and Izuna feels out the edge of them with his toes. He takes them slowly, one at a time, because the only light is from the doorway at his back and that square has grown smaller and smaller.

He keeps one hand pressed to the wall, the other reaching out in front of himself into the darkness. Just because he hasn’t hit a wall or a door or  _ something  _ doesn’t mean he won't. 

There’s an inch or two of cold water at the bottom of the stairs and he shivers up to his neck from the sudden contact. “Flooding?” He muttered, “In  _ our  _ cellar?” He frowns, yanking on his pants to keep them out of the water but, well, he can’t do that and hold onto the wall at the same time so he quickly bends over to roll them up to his knees. 

Izuna walks forward slowly. The steps have definitely ended, but the world is only darker because of the distance from the stairs above. He slides his toes and the balls of his feet across the ground as he walks, mindful that shallow water could easily give away to deep water. Who knows what’s going on down in the cellar- It’s not lit, after all, and he hasn’t run into a single box or barrel or-

A weird wuffling, breathy sound stops him in his tracks. 

Bending forwards, Izuna reaches out, waving his hands back and forth. There’s nothing in front of him for a few feet so he figures it’s, well, probably safe for a little fire jutsu to light up the world.

A few hand signs, a push of chakra, a sharp exhale and-

The fireball that blossoms in the air in front of him is viciously bright. It flares out wide, arching down into the shallow water all around. As it descends, he sees the metal bars of an enormous cage and something red and moving inside of it. Something wooden, like a plaque or a sign, hangs from the bars, strung there by something out of sight. 

The light of the flame catches on the fur and ripples over it like a reflection in a mirror. The cage is just outside of his current range of his arms, but not his fire it turns out. A handful of it splashes onto the wood and the rope that holds it up and almost immediately it catches fire.

Izuna stares in surprise as the wood burns up exceedingly quickly but the words, the words carved into it and painted black, seem to … hover in the air. As the last of the wood burns, the words light up with a weird phrase.

“Go. The fuck. To sleep?” Izuna reads it aloud, utterly confused. The sound of the words, however, resonates in his bones like someone stuck a tuning fork between his teeth and rung it. He puts his hands over his ears, groaning, wincing, as a headache blooms in his eyes. The burn of it is weirdly almost-familiar too. It takes a moment, longer than it should have, really, for him to identify it as the pain-burn of the sharigan’s activation-

Not the standard sharingan, actually, but the mangekyo. 

Izuna reaches for his eyes instead of his ears, touches the blood dripping down his cheeks and looks at his pale, bloodstained hands in the dimming light. “What?” He doesn’t understand. This isn’t his cellar. This isn’t...his home… Madara isn’t here. No one is.

_ “Just go to sleep. Just pretend it’s all a dream. Just go to sleep. Just pretend it’s all a dream.”  _ Words, ageless, sexless, whisper in the darkness. They seem to come from above him, behind him, even below him in the water. Izuna’s heart clenches in his chest- was he asleep? Was this a dream?

No.  _ No.  _ It couldn’t be. No. It was that other life. That abandoned child and hateful village- Those were the dreams! He was going to get out of this water filled cellar, find Madara, get someone  _ else  _ to deal with the- with the-

What  _ was  _ that. That thing he’d seen in the cage?

He could faintly see it still. The words hovered in the air, burning red like embers in a banked fire. The thing in the cage gleamed even in that low light. Izuna slunk close to it, feeling almost… drawn towards it. As he reaches the bars, he crouches down, leaning against them and putting his hand inside.

Long fingers run over warm, thick fur for a second, and then another. He smiles at the sensation. It’s soft, like a cat’s fur, and reminds him of the stray that had begun to loiter around the apartment in that dream-world as an infant. Even if the cat  _ was  _ a dream, he hoped someone found a new home for it. 

Above his head, the light of the sign began to fade.

Just as he was doused back into darkness, the creature stirred.

Izuna looked up from red fur and directly into enormous red eyes. The beast, and it surely was a beast, had opened its eyes and stared at him. In silence, their eyes met. Izuna opened his mouth to exclaim  _ “how marvelous!”  _  because, indeed they were, but the creature spoke first and spoke louder. 

**_Uchiha scum! I will kill you and that miserable little village you founded!_ **

With an undignified yelp, Izuna yanked his hand back so fast that he hit himself in the chest. He reeled back, lost his balance, flailed his other arm in an attempt to catch it, and instead landed on his ass in the water with a splash.

Flames sprang into life in the chamber all around him, their curling forms supported on sconces along the walls. Suddenly, the oppressively dark and small cellar was an enormous cavern. Izuna gaped as he saw the impossibly wide room. The ceiling was too high for the flames to illuminate.

He could no longer see the stairs he had walked down to get there.

The beast in the cage demanded his attention with a snarl and a snap of its teeth. Izuna slowly turned back towards it, still sitting in the water, head still aching. He opened his  mouth and out came a garble of words.

“But I didn’t found a--- What in the hell are  _ you--  _ How did I never-- This can’t be a dream! This can’t be the dream! Tell me this isn’t a dream!” 

The dark lips of the beast- a fox, Izuna noticed distantly, from the shape of its head and its eyes and ears- pulled back in a mockery of a human smile.  **_This is no dream._ **

**_You’re in the belly of the beast now, Uchiha, and you’d best find your way out of my host yourself before I find my way to you!_ **

Izuna didn’t understand. He didn’t- He couldn’t-

His head throbbed in agony. His eyes burned.  _ Sleep. Dream. Sleep. Dream.  _ The words were insistent instructions. They were familiar but not- They were there but not- They were in his flesh- In his skin- In his eyes-

Izuna curled tighter around himself. Yes. That was it. It was in his eyes. Whatever it was- Whatever had happened- It was done to his mind through his  _ eyes- _

Izuna hadn’t spent an entire lifetime perfecting his sharingan and his mangekyo only to lose his mind to the hypnotism of some half-mad desire embedded in his mind by sharingan. He could break it. He could escape it. And he would.

Even if it meant that this body he had woken up in was a dream. 

Izuna had to be strong.

For Madara.

 

* * *

 

“Excuse me? Uchiha-san?”

Shisui paused, because, okay, he wasn’t the only ‘Uchiha-san’ that voice could be calling out to, but he was pretty sure that he knew it from somewhere. He glanced to Itachi, at his side, and shrugged as his cousin gave him a blank, vaguely curious look. Turning on his heel, Shisui pulled the dango stick from his mouth. There was only one left and he absently gave it to Itachi, “Hey,” he grinned to the girl standing a few feet behind them. “You’re that flower girl from Sasuke’s class, right?”

_ And Naruto’s classmate too,  _ he thought, remembering their brief conversation that morning. “What’s up?”

She held out the cloth wrapped bento he had given her to give to Naruto that morning. “Naruto wasn’t just late this morning. He never showed up. I don’t know where he lives but I think he would really appreciate this anyway. Do you know where he lives? Can you take me there?”

Shisui could feel Itachi eyeing him as he stepped towards her. “He didn’t show up? Well I’ll be damned.” He held out his hand. “If he’s at his place I can just take that to him myself.”

The girl brought the bento close to her chest and held it with both arms. She leveled a pretty good glare at him too, even with those round cheeks and bright pink hair. “I want to see him! He’s my best friend!”

“And you don’t know where he lives?” Shisui teased, tucking his hand into his pocket instead. 

“You don’t get to determine what being best friends means to Naruto and I,” the girl snapped. Damn but she was just as articulate as Naruto himself. Shisui chuckled and shrugged. 

“I guess I don’t. Well come on. We were just headed there ourselves, weren’t we Itachi?” He smiled to his cousin, who nodded once. Itachi’s eyes were still on the girl, evaluating her. She as incongruous from most other five year olds they knew- Naruto included. Her hair and eyes and face, all rounded and cute like a little doll, didn’t match up with the serious ninja clothing she wore. The cutest and most little girl thing about her was probably the way her hair was braided into two pigtails. The least little girl thing about her was the empty sword sheath at her side.

He held out his hand to her again, “It’s this way.”

She gave a satisfied little nod, seemed to completely ignore the way Itachi stared at her, and walked up. Her hand was small in his and Shisui had the weirdest sense of deja vu walking with her. She reminded him of Naruto more than Sasuke- although all three of them were the same age. 

She held onto his hand with that same tightness that Naruto had, as if she weren’t quite used to the action. As if she had to hold on tight or else Shisui would slip away.

“What is your name?” Itachi asked as they walked together. He gave Shisui a pointed look, clearly annoyed to not be properly introduced to someone that was interfering. Shisui could see the question in his eyes about the bento too. Ah. Well. Shisui would explain that when they had a moment. It wasn’t as if it had been his idea in the first place. 

“Haruno Sakura,” the girl said. “You must be Uchiha Itachi, right?”

Itachi nodded, more wary that she knew him than that she hadn’t. “You are Naruto’s friend?”

“His very best,” She insisted, “I sit next to him in class. We share our books.”

Itachi frowned. He glanced up at Shisui and uh oh, Itachi recognized her. Looking back at the girl he asked, “...You’re the girl that joins Naruto in teasing Sasuke?”

“It makes Naruto happy,” Sakura said blithely, swinging her and Shisui’s joined hands as they walked, “He’s just dealing with his Uchiha obsession with teasing. He’ll grow out of it soon enough.”

“Eh?” Shisui interjected, “Uchiha obsession?”

“Everyone in class has it,” She shrugged. “Since we have three Uchiha in our class and they all sit together and don’t really talk to the other kids? Everyone looks at them and gossips.” She grinned, “Sasuke’s just the favorite because the girls think he’s the cutest.”

“The girls?” Shisui asked, “Sounds like you’re not included in that.” He grinned back at her, “Don’t you think Sasu-chan is cute too, Saku-chan?”

Sakura snorted. It was the strangest thing. She sounded more like an adult than anything but responded to his teasing cheerfully, “Sasuke has to do a lot of growing before I’d ever become interested in him. He’s just a bitty baby right now, but maybe someday, if he’s pushed in the right way at the right time…” Her fingers tightened around Shisui’s and her gaze, ahead of them, sharpened. 

“He could turn into a shinobi worth putting my trust into, if not my love. I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love. I won’t have much time for that.” 

“Woah,” Shisui couldn’t help but say. “Intense, kid.” 

Sakura blinked, glanced up at him and then away again quickly. There was an embarrassed flush on her cheeks, “Don’t call me  _ kid.  _ I don’t like it.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Shisui apologized with a little laugh, “Anyway, we’re here. It’s just up in this apartment building…”

Sakura’s fingers dug into his hand even tighter than before. Then she slipped her hand out and wrapped both arms around the bento Mikoto had instructed him to take to Naruto that morning. Silently, Itachi lead the way into the apartment building. Sakura was just as quiet on his heels.

Shisui followed, trying not to think about how vaguely ominous their procession looked.

 

* * *

 

“What do you  _ mean  _ he took control of you? Why would he want to burn the village down? Why can’t you explain why my brother did  _ anything?  _ What good are you as a fucking demon beast anyway!?”

Kurama wished he had not woken up. He really, really had. 

In the time between his sealing into that irritatingly cheerful infant and this moment, his host’s mind had been replaced by this aggravating Uchiha. 

Not the one that had gotten him into this mess- as he had thought when he saw that familiar curve of black in those blood red eyes- but the younger brother. Kurama had made the mistake of voicing that realization, as well as the following  _ “you have his eyes, though I suppose it was he who had your eyes.” _

Really, when was he going to learn to keep his goddamn mouth shut around fucking Uchiha?

Now this one gripped the bars of his cage and shook them, like he could actually weaken them with his fists alone. 

“Tell me  _ everything _ you know about Madara! Tell me right now. Or else!” 

**_Or else what, you miserable little human?_ **

Izuna’s face lit up from the inside with malicious intent. Kurama paused at the sight of it, narrowing his eyes. He had seen plenty of human expressions, but so few ever matched that twist of sadistic glee that he himself had felt when he had laid out the grandest of tricks only for the sweetest of prey to stumble in them. 

“We’re in my headspace,” Izuna purred, sliding his hands down the bars and staring up at Kurama with those miserable mangekyo eyes. “Anything I can think of doing I can do if I have enough willpower.” 

He grinned even wider. If he had had fangs, they would have been bared. Kurama had no doubt of that. 

“You’ll find that when it comes to Madara, there is nothing that I cannot accomplish.”

 

* * *

 

The door to Naruto’s apartment opened a crack. Itachi blinked, surprised to see Hatake’s face in the crack. He gets one solid grey eyed stare and a “Fuck. Off.” low and rough and completely unexpected.

Itachi clenches his jaw. “The Hokage wishes for me to take my rotation and watch over Naruto.” 

“Yeah? Did he say to bring guests?” Hatake opens the door half an inch more, so he can stare past Itachi to Shisui. His gaze drops down and widens at the sight of the pink haired girl.

Haruno shoulders past Itachi, wedges herself against the door and says, “Let me in, dog. I want to see Naruto!” 

_ “Dog-”  _ Hatake starts indignantly. But he opens the door another half inch and that’s all Haruno needs to get in. She’s through the crack and past Hatake before he can finish his tired snarl at her. “Oi!” he turns, shouting at her.

He abandons the door and Itachi hurries in, Shisui right behind. Hatake vanishes out the door to the bedroom in the back of the apartment and Itachi hears a the door open half a second later. What’s surprising to find, though, is Genma in the living room with Raido. Genma’s got a book out, his feet in Raido’s lap while Raido plays target practice with some senbon and a target across the room. 

“What are you two doing here?” Shisui asks.

“It’s my shift,” Genma replied without looking up. “Raido’s just keeping me company.”

“Even though Kakashi’s here?” Shisui says with a gesture towards the back room.

The answer doesn’t come because the next minute is filled with the surprisingly loud and increasingly shrill shrieking of a five year old girl.

“You keep your hands to yourself you damn dog! And get out, get the hell out! Get out of his room! Get out! I know what you did! I know what you fucking did! You’re the worst! You’re an idiot! Get out. Get out! _ Get OUT, Bakashi!”  _

Itachi’s in the hallway by the third word, at the door by the first ‘get out’ and has the door open by the fourth. Haruno stands on Naruto’s bed, a kunai in her hand and her face twisted in rage. Hatake stands with his back pressed against the wall by the door, his one visible eye wide as can be. His left hand is halfway up to his face, his fingers curled as if he’s barely restraining himself from clawing at his own eye. 

It’s the first time Itachi’s seen him all day and oddly it's not the panicked gaze but the blood on his cheek from unhealed scratches that catches his attention. 

Haruno’s fury isn’t reserved for Kakashi alone- who really looks like he’s one more word away from running for the hills. She turns those sharp, gleaming green eyes on Itachi and snarls at him. “Out with you too. Not one of you bloody sharingan users is getting near my Naruto. Do you hear me? Not one of you is going to be near him while he’s like this!” 

Itachi tenses when he looks to Naruto. He’s heard from the Hokage that the boy had been put to sleep forcibly because of a nightmare but looking at him now… He looks almost dead. With how shallow his breath is, how drawn his features, how sunken his eyes, he looks nothing like the small and vibrant child that had cuddled his mother at the kitchen table just the night before. He’s seen it once or twice, hasn’t done it much himself even though he knows Shisui’s a fan of the technique, but he can still recognize a sharingan induced  _ coma _ when he sees it.

This is not what the Hokage told him.

This is not how one was supposed to help a child recover from a nightmare.

Itachi turns towards Hatake. 

Hatake breathes out the words,  _ “Don’t say that,”  _ but it’s not towards Itachi, it’s towards the girl.

The girl who looks at him, her face twisting in her anger and with a vicious smirk. “Get out of my sight. Ba. Ka. Shi.”

Hatake breaks, slipping past Itachi so fast he causes a little breeze. Shisui presses against Itachi’s back, his fingers curling in Itachi’s jacket, “C’mon, this is one of those times we cut our losses, cousin.” Shisui whispers into his ear, “She can’t hurt him any worse than he’s hurt already. She’s five.”

Itachi lets Shisui pull him back out of the room. 

The last thing he sees is Haruno turning from the door to kneel at Naruto’s side and take one of his hands in both of hers, pressing it to her cheek. 

The door shuts in his face and down at the end of the hall, Genma says, “What the fuck happened  _ now?” _

 

* * *

 

There’s a weight on his chest and a familiar lump under his side and while the former is confusing, the latter tells him he’s back in that shitty tiny bed in that shitty tiny apartment. He’s hot, way too hot, and sweaty because of it. Naruto grumbles, pushing out at the blanket wrapped around him like a cocoon.

Blinking open an eye, Naruto is greeted by weak sunlight and...something pink? He opens his mouth, licking dry lips with a marginally damper tongue. He’s thirsty as hell.

The weight lifts with a sudden jerk and suddenly there’s a face above his. Green eyes, rimmed red from tears, stare down at him. Naruto places the face not from the eyes but the loose pink hair that falls across her forehead, escaping two pigtail braids. 

“Haruno?” His voice is as dry as his throat.

_ “Izuna,”  _ She whispers back at him. He freezes. Her fingers are twisted in the blanket still wrapped around him. He tries to laugh, to play it off, to do or say something to dissuade her-

“Izuna,” she whispers again, “You’re back. Oh thank god. I don’t know what I would have done if I lost you again-” she lets out a sob, soft as a feather, and her head dips down. Her forehead presses against his collarbone, “Little brother, don’t you dare scare me like that again. I can’t… I won’t survive if I lose you  _ twice.”  _

Naruto stares up at his ceiling. His ears echo with the ringing words of the kyuubi. His heart pounds in shock. With shaking hands, he reaches up and takes her by the shoulders, pushing her up. He has to see her face, has to see her expression when he asks-

“Madara?” He whispered, “Is that you?”

Haruno’s crying but she smiles at him.

She smiles at him with Madara’s smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know things look bleak for Kakashi here but I promise, I promise, he'll get some peace and atonement soon. 
> 
> And yeah! Now everyone gets to know who Sakura is!


End file.
